20 One Shots: The Return
by Bekkoni
Summary: My second series of 20 one-shots based on 20 one-word prompts. Prompt 20: Dinner. Mostly Batman- and Trinity-centric. Occasional warnings for fluff and swearing. Complete.
1. Clothes

**A/N: Well, it certainly appears that I can't stay away from one-shots for long. **

~Clothes~

"You're coming, and that's final," Clark said. Bruce had his arms crossed and a signature glare across his face.

"Absolutely not," Bruce snapped. "I have _work_ to do."

"You always have 'work' to do," Clark resisted the glare only through conscious effort. "Coffee and dinner will do you good."

"I don't even know how to act at a dinner," Bruce said. He turned back to his stack of papers.

"Sure you do. You do it all the time."

"_Bruce Wayne_ does it all the time."

Clark sighed and rolled his eyes. "Now you're just being ridiculous. You come or I'll call every empty-headed ninny in your—ahem, _Bruce Wayne's_- little black book and set you up a date with them."

"That's not a true threat," Bruce snapped.

"You're coming," Clark replied, and that was the end of it.

***#***

"I don't think he'll be here," Diana said. She was sitting in the red plastic booth, scanning the menu and trying very hard not to look disappointed.

"He said he would," Clark ordered a Coke from the waitress and sat down next to Diana. He'd chosen a little Italian restaurant in west Metropolis. They'd met up here a few times before. The proprietor probably half suspected—it wasn't like Diana or even John tried very hard at a secret identity—but it was cheap and good.

Wally was already there, Shayera too, even J'onn in human guise. Everyone but Bruce.

"He'll be here," Clark repeated, even though he didn't feel very hopeful.

But Bruce walked in the door, or rather, Bruce in a slight disguise—lighter hair and a five o' clock shadow.

"You can hold your applause," he said, and took his seat on the other side of Diana.

"No need for sarcasm," Diana smiled and nearly put her arm around him. "What took you?"

"Business at the Watchtower," Bruce answered, declining to elaborate, and asked the waitress for a glass of water with lemon.

Clark was squinting at him.

"Is something the matter?" Bruce asked. Clark shook his head and they ordered dinner (Bruce got tortellini only after Clark insisted that he couldn't order tilapia at an Italian place).

The food came, and Clark gave Bruce another odd, sidelong glance.

"Is that my shirt?" he asked.

Bruce looked down at the knitted green pullover he was wearing under his jacket. "I borrowed it."

"_Why?_" Clark asked. He was very used to asking that question around Bruce.

"Because I don't really own clothes appropriate to the occasion," Bruce replied, because obviously this was a perfectly viable explanation.

"How can you be a multibillionaire and not own casual clothes?" Diana asked.

Bruce shrugged. "I'm either wearing my costume or in a suit. What use do I have for them?"

"You're exasperating," Diana said. The food came and she took it from the waitress as a distraction.

"I do own a t-shirt and a pair of jeans," Bruce said.

Clark just sighed. Then he looked at Bruce again, over his plate of spaghetti. "Wait a second—that shirt has been missing for two months."

"I didn't say it was _this_ occasion that I didn't have clothes for," Bruce speared a tortellini, examined it, and tasted it experimentally.

"You don't even like my clothes! Every time you see me out of costume you feel it necessary to give me unwanted fashion advice," Clark jabbed his fork into his spaghetti.

"Your clothes are comfortable," Bruce apparently liked the tortellini—he stuck two more on his fork.

"Remind me to take you shopping sometime," Clark said, and gave up an argument he knew he wouldn't win.

"Over my dead body," Bruce muttered, and turned pointedly back to his pasta.


	2. Laundry

**A/N: If any Wally fans know if he has an actual middle name, please let me know. Also, I don't know what my sudden obsession with Batman's clothes are, but it seems to be a recurring theme. It makes me giggle. **

~Laundry~

The door to the meeting room flew open and slammed against the wall. Flash dived under the table just as Bruce stormed in. "WALLACE FLANAGAN WEST!"

There was dead silence for a second

"Your middle name is Flanagan?" Clark asked Flash, then quirked an eyebrow at Bruce's outfit—an oversized tan trench coat that covered everything but his gloves and boots. He wasn't even wearing the mask.

"Where is he, Clark?" Bruce fumed. From under the table, Clark could hear Wally whispering _please don't kill me please don't kill me._

"Calm down," Diana said. "Just because he pulled some silly prank on you doesn't mean you have to go all psycho."

"Some silly PRANK?" Bruce bellowed. "A _prank_!"

Under the table, Wally gulped. Bruce heard, grabbed the table, and overturned it as the rest of the League leapt out of the way. Wally cowered on the floor, and Bruce dragged him up by the collar.

"You _will_ reverse what you did," he snarled, as he slammed Flash against the wall. Clark stood up and tried to pry them apart.

"I think that's quite enough," he said. Bruce turned and growled at him. Clark forcibly yanked Wally away from Bruce and held them apart.

"Look, what happened?" John asked, putting a wall of green light between Bruce and Clark and Wally. Bruce glared at him and slammed a gloved fist against the wall.

"If you tell me what happened, maybe I can mediate a punishment for Wally," Clark offered, "if it truly is something bad and not just an affront to your anal-retentiveness—as it usually is as I might add."

Bruce looked down. If Clark hadn't known better, he might have thought something crossed Bruce's face—embarrassment?

"Go in there," he said, and pointed to the supply closet.

"Oh, come on," Clark said. "What is it, are you naked under that stupid trench coat or something?"

"No!" Bruce snapped and turned absolutely scarlet.

"Your ears turn red when you blush," Diana said with a smirk, and Bruce turned even redder.

"Fine," Bruce snapped, turned to Clark, and undid the buttons of the trench coat. Clark took one look, snorted, put his hands over his mouth, and then started laughing so hard there were tears running down his face.

"Oh my god, Wally," he said between gasps. "What did you _do?_"

"Bleach and then red washcloths," Wally said proudly.

"What is it?" Diana asked, hopping over the upside-down table. Bruce fumbled with the buttons, trying close the trench coat before she could see. But Diana just hopped up and pulled open his lapels.

His costume was pink. Bright, hot pink from his neck to his feet with a red bat symbol at the center of his chest.

"He did this to _all_ my costumes," Bruce mumbled. "And I…uh…I didn't have anything else to wear up here."

They all started snickering then, even Shayera. John doubled over laughing and lost his concentration. The green wall went down. Bruce lunged at Wally, and Clark tore them both apart.

Diana through her arms around Bruce, and kissed him on the cheek. "I think you look cute in pink."

Suddenly he wasn't so eager to kill Wally. At least, not until he found a nice dark alley.


	3. Television

**A/N: Thanks to batmanluvr for the prompt to this installment (yes I know it was for the last series, but still)!**

~Television~

Clark saw it on the television.

He had taken the day off from active duty, intending to have a nice dinner with Lois, casually ignore his super-hearing, and just have a nice night.

It was the worst possible way to find out.

"Clark!" He was cooking dinner, and thought she was calling him to try some line out from her latest article.

"Be right there," he said, and stirred the peas.

"_Clark!_ For God's sake! Clark!"

He was in the living room in seconds, but there was nothing he could have done. Lois was sitting on the couch, gripping the armrest, the research for her article forgotten on the floor.

On the TV was the news, and it was playing one thing over and over.

There was the Justice League, combating a troop of metahuman suicide bombers. One of them, standing on top of an apartment building, was obviously the true threat, the others simply decoys. Diana dove for him, and Clark expected to see her easily disarm him.

The bomber picked a weapon from his belt (Clark cursed the camera angle), and shot her. Diana tried to deflect it with her bracelets, and instead just fell hard to the ground.

The bomber activated his explosives, brilliant red lights flashing all over his vest. Clark lurched forward. Had they failed? Was that what-

Bruce, in his costume of swirling leapt from the right side of the screen and tackled the bomber, wrestling with him. Clark saw him glance at the explosives, register how much time the League had.

Then, Bruce pulled a grappling hook form his belt and he and the bomber flew out of view. The camera panned right, just in time to catch an explosion over a construction site. When the dust cleared, there was the remains of the bomber's clothes, and an empty, torn black cowl.

***#***

There was no funeral. Bruce hadn't wanted one, and the only way Dick could have taken over the costume was if it was kept as quiet as possible. Zatanna volunteered to play the part of Bruce Wayne for a few months, until they killed him off quietly.

The Justice League had their own service, up in the Watchtower. Diana just looked into her glass of wine, silent and tear-eyed. Wally tried to crack a couple of half-hearted jokes, but eventually just sniffled and gave up.

"What are we going to do without Bats?" he asked.

Clark just shook his head. This was almost pathetic—someone (him, he could even muster something to say) ought to give a eulogy, but how do you sum up Batman? "Carry on. It's what he would have said."

Diana slammed her hand on the table, stood up, and left. After a minute, Clark followed her and found her in the observation bay with tears on her face.

"I should have done something," she whispered. "I should have stopped them. Hera. First you almost die saving me and then Bruce."

She looked down. "But he isn't coming back, is he?"

Clark looked out the window with her, not wanting to give an answer.

***#***

The first week was hard. None of them had ever imagined how much work Bruce put into Gotham City. After Wally was gassed by Scarecrow, they started patrolling in twos.

Robin, Batgirl, and Dick did their best, but it was only after they'd gone through the Batcomputer with a fine-toothed comb that they realized exactly how much Bruce had never told them.

By the second week, they'd started picking up patterns—Two-Face's mannerisms, the tiny hints Riddler would give in the days before he committed a crime. Nothing like what Bruce must have done, but they were able to stop enough.

Once, Clark had the Joker cornered in a warehouse, trying to make him reveal the whereabouts of a plutonium stash.

"What're you going to do, Superdoof?" Joker taunted. "You're not Batsy. _Batsy_ isn't Batsy anymore. What do you think you're going to do?"

Clark had lost it, just a little bit, in that moment, and dove upward with the Joker until the choice was to give up the information or pass out. After he had what he wanted, he slammed the clown's head against the wall once, just to make him stop laughing.

No wonder Bruce had hardly ever let them into Gotham.

***#***

A month, and seven Leaguers had been injured in Gotham. Crazy as it sounded, all the villains seemed to sense that Dick wasn't the true Batman. He was a little more acrobatic, true, and not as good at catching the riddles Gotham trash seemed so fond of creating.

It was a little disconcerting, though. The remaining original Leaguers barely talked over lunch anymore, tired from both losing a comrade and fighting another impossible battle.

Which was why they were slow to leap from their seat when the alarms sounded.

"Unauthorized teleporter use. Unauthorized teleporter use," the computers voice droned over the klaxons.

They ran into the teleporter room, where five guards were standing with their weapons pointed at the glowing pad. One tech was desperately punching buttons on the control console, "I can't shut it down!"

A figure emerged out of the glow. Diana gasped. Clark stiffened, and Wally ran up to the pad.

A disheveled, muddy, and capeless Batman was standing on the transporter pad.

"Bruce!" Clark exclaimed

Wally ran up to him and jumped on him. "Bats! You're alive! You're not dead. Ohmygodwethoughtyouweredead! Andyou'renotthisiswaycool!"

Batman carefully removed Flash from his person and turned to the others. "I had to go into deep cover to infiltrate Intergang. They were trafficking Apokoliptian tech. I'm going to wash up now."

He started walking towards the dorms, leaving the others in stunned silence.

Diana smacked him across the face. Clark grabbed her arm, but she yanked it away.

"How _dare_ you?" she yelled, backing him against a wall. "You think you can just let us all think you're _dead_? And then walk back in here with absolutely no apology, just your usually pigheaded selfishness? It stops here. Am I clear?"

Batman looked at her for a second, then walked away again. "Seriously, Princess. I don't need your approval."

She slammed him against the wall. "_Do I make myself clear!"_

Batman backed away a step. "Yes, Diana."

"Good," she said, reached up, and kissed him in a way that most of the people watching had not thought a virgin princess could do.

"Well," Clark said, blushing. "Let's give them their privacy, shall we?"

The transporter room emptied in the blink of an eye.


	4. After

**A/N: A new chapter, finally. Sorry for the delay.**

~After~

_Takes place immediately after Hereafter._

Clark tore the mission rotation schedule off the bulletin board and thrust it at Diana. "I don't appreciate this, Di."

"What?" she took the sheet from him, scanned over it.

Clark sighed, jabbed a finger at his name. "I've been back for four weeks and you keep putting me on maintenance or monitor duty! Or sending me off on some harebrained errand for the UN, as if you think I can't handle myself."

Diana looked utterly confused for a minute, then she just shook her head. "I'm not making the rotations this month."

"Then who is?" Clark asked, and took the paper back. "I'd like a word with them."

"Bruce."

"Of course," Clark muttered, and stormed off in the direction of the monitor bay.

***#***

Bruce was perched on the chair, black-gloved fingers flying over the keys as he switched from screen to screen to screen, coordinating missions, running reconnaissance, and keeping an eye on Gotham.

Clark slapped the roster down over the keyboard. Batman glanced in his direction then ignored him as he concentrated on a flooding river in Mongolia. "Bruce. Explain this."

"It's a mission rotation," Bruce didn't deign him a look.

"I'm not an idiot. I was referring to the fact that you keep putting me off-duty," Clark hit a button on the keyboard that made the screen immediately in front go black. Batman scowled and turned to him, finally.

"Luck of the draw, Kent."

"Give me a break," Clark leaned against the monitor, blocking Bruce's access to the switch that would turn the screen back on. "You've never been one to play dice."

Bruce stood silently and waited for him to move. Clark sighed again. It was hopeless to get into a battle of wills with Batman; he knew, he'd tried. "We can play this your way: by not using my strength you're putting the teams at a tactical disadvantage."

"Another tactical disadvantage is loss of morale from the death of Superman," Bruce said, and tried to reach around Clark to the switch. Clark blocked him easily.

"I'm not planning on dying again anytime soon," Clark said.

The slits in Bruce's cowl narrowed. "Were you _planning_ on it the first time? Because I would have like to have been informed."

"Technically, I didn't die."

"Fine. Were you planning on Toyman shooting you with destabilized gamma radiation and sending you millennia into the future?" Batman was edging on a snarl. Clark was treading the limits of how far to push him.

He tried a last time, "What will it take for you to put me back on missions that doesn't require me to hack into the system?"

Bruce paused before responding. "Stop saving me."

"What?" Clark asked.

"When Toyman shot you, you were deflecting the blast from me. Diana likely would have survived," Bruce stopped again, put on a more menacing tone and pulled his cape around him. "Learn some self-preservation."

"That's absurd-." Clark began, then grinned. "You actually missed me."

"I knew you weren't dead," Bruce said. "It was elementary."

"That's not what Alfred and Diana claim," Clark smiled.

"They're sugarcoating it for you," Bruce snapped.

Clark chose his next phrase carefully, "Don't you think it's pretty unfair to ask me to not save you when you'd save me? I'd be just as upset if _you_ died."

Bruce lunged for the switch again. Clark let him have it this time. He waited until after the screen lit up to speak again.

"I promise I won't die on you, Bruce."

Bruce hammered at the keys. "You can't promise that."

"I'll try very hard then."

Clark watched Bruce sigh and open the rotation chart, "All right."

"Thank you," Clark said, but stayed where he was. Bruce looked at him, hand poised over the keys. "I'm waiting for you to change it—I do know you pretty well by now."

Bruce changed the file.


	5. Clean

**A/N: This fic is inspired by a recent run in BlackCat's "Batman and Sons" webcomic. It is hilarious, and you should totally go read it at batmanandsons dot blogspot dot com.**

**Anyone reading my other fic, "Fever": I promise I'll have ch. 7 up by Sunday. **

**P.S. This is a total crackfic. You have been forewarned.**

~Clean~

Bruce tossed the covers off the bed, slipped on a pair of loafers, and headed downstairs for breakfast. Or lunch, depending on how you looked at it.

It was one in the afternoon. He'd gotten home at six, just in the nick of time even with the late winter sunrise. The fresh bruises on his back were beginning to get sore, and he grabbed two aspirin from the medicine cabinet, to have with tea.

He walked into the kitchen smelling chocolate cake. Alfred was whistling along to the radio, and Bruce could also hear the sound of chopping vegetables.

Bruce swung open the kitchen door and froze.

"Hey Bats!" Wally trilled. He was sitting gleefully at the counter, chocolate smudged at both corners of his mouth. Somehow he managed to talk and shove a piece of cake into his mouth simultaneously.

Bruce stared.

Wally opened his mouth again, with the cake half-chewed. "A t-shirt and boxers as pajamas? Isn't that a little cliché?"

"What are you doing here?" Bruce snapped, after he'd scooted behind the island.

"Eating cake," Wally said, and elegantly carved of another bite, as if to illustrate the point.

"ALFRED!"

Alfred appeared from the pantry. "You bellowed, Master Bruce?"

Bruce pointed at Wally, who grinned.

"Well, sir, I wasn't expecting you up for another hour," Alfred measured out a cup of flour and dumped into the mixing bowl. "Master Wally would have been gone if you had."

"What's he here for, Alfred?" Bruce glared at Wally, who merely dug back into his slice. He saw the cake sitting on a glass dish on the other counter, but there was no way he could get to it without exposing for the second time that he wasn't wearing pants.

"As you can see sir, he's having a slice of cake," Alfred added a handful of carrots to a copper soup pot and turned the burner on high.

Bruce sighed. "I can see that."

"If you would like a slice you are free to get it sir," Alfred said over his shoulder. "As you can see, I am rather covered in olive oil and vegetables."

"I'm in my _pajamas_, Alfred," Bruce said. Wally giggled from the table. For someone who could knock out twenty sandwiches in a couple seconds, he sure was taking his time with that cake.

"That is quite the paradox, isn't it?" Alfred demurred.

"It's alright, Bats," Wally's mouth was full of cake. "There was that time when you and Supes got caught in that fire and you didn't have your suit all fireproofed yet and-."

"You say one more word and I will tear your larynx out," Bruce nearly leapt across the island. "I told you and Clark you were never, ever to mention that again."

"What's this now?" Alfred asked.

"_Nothing_." Bruce said.

Wally smiled. "Supes and Bats got caught in this huge inferno and Bat's suit got all burnt up. Supes lent him his cape, though."

"Wallace. Rudolph. West." Bruce snarled. "You are a dead man."

Alfred chuckled. "I would have liked to have been privy to that."

Bruce put his head down on the island.

Wally grinned. "It was _hilarious_. " Suddenly, he looked at Bruce, "Supes was right! Your ears _do_ turn red when you blush!"

Bruce groaned, "Good god, Alfred, please get rid of him."

Wally pointed to his plate. "Not done yet."

"It takes you THIRTY SECONDS to eat sixteen sandwiches! What in the world is the holdup for ONE piece of cake!" Bruce nearly leapt across the kitchen at Wally.

"It's really good cake," Wally shaved off another hair-thin piece. Bruce felt his blood pressure rising.

"Alfred, _please_," he begged.

The butler shrugged. "I had to recompense Master Wally for services rendered, sir. It _is_ part of our agreement, you know."

Bruce suddenly had the feeling that he should never have gotten out of bed. "Pray tell, what agreement?"

Alfred looked utterly puzzled. "Well, surely, Master Wayne, you don't think I clean the entire manor by myself?"

"What?"

"Master Wally comes over every other Thursday and does the vacuuming, dusting, and polishing," Alfred patiently explained. "And in return, I bake. Master Dick and Master Barry used to have quite lengthy conversations over breakfast."

"You hired _Barry?_" Bruce asked.

Alfred stirred his soup. "And Master Jay before him, sir. It appears my desserts have gained quite a following among the underwear-on-the-outside community."

Bruce blinked, and stared at Wally. "You've been in my house?"

"You should really start making your own bed, Bats," Wally was down to the last fourth of the cake. "I was doing it by the time I was ten."

"You've been in my BEDROOM?" Bruce shouted. Alfred looked at him like this was of no particular consequence. Wally merely shrugged.

Bruce gave up, took a clean plate out of the cupboard and sliced himself a very thick piece of cake. Then he retreated to his bedroom and double bolted the doors.

Maybe if he tried hard enough he could erase this morning. Or ask J'onn to do it.


	6. Sleep

**A/N: ****This has been bouncing around on my hard drive for awhile now—figured I'd finally post it. Total fluff warning.**

**Also, all this Bruce-Wally stuff is leading to the next fic. There's a point to it, I promise. **

~Sleep~

The Justice League piled into the Javelin, bowing their last ceremonial goodbyes to the envoy from Gh'Thrr. Thankfully, they'd managed to avert interplanetary war, but they'd had to spend four days on the other side of the cosmic belt.

Clark took a seat towards the back, feeling immensely out of place in his corduroy jacket. They'd worn their costumes most of the time, but on the last day the Ghrrians had insisted on seeing 'normal Earth wear.'

Still, it was worth it just to see Bruce, uncomfortable in a borrowed t-shirt, jeans and jacket.

If he _could _see Bruce. God, Clark hoped he wasn't arguing with the Ghrrian prime minister over the correct classification of butternut squash again. _That_ in itself had nearly caused a war.

Clark craned his neck to see the doorway and saw Bruce finally come in. The Dark Knight was hiding a yawn behind his hand. Clark grinned and patted the seat next to him.

"If you're insisting on autopilot, then I at least get the window seat," Bruce said. Clark shrugged and scooted over. Diana perched in the row ahead of them, leaning over her chair back to talk to Clark, and Wally sat next to her, absorbed in a huge stack of comics.

John and Shayera were seated on the other side of the aisle, together (as always), and J'onn was up front next to an empty seat, eyes wide orange in meditation.

Diana leaned over and grinned at Bruce. "You look tired."

"I'm not," He turned on one of the electronic tablets he'd designed for the Watchtower and started running a program on the Watchtower's hydroponic systems.

"I don't think I ever saw you sleep these last four days."

"You introduced me as the security officer. Obviously, I had to be constantly observant."

Clark stared at him. "I introduced you as that because I was introducing us all as having some sort of traditional role in their language. I didn't think you'd take it so seriously as to not _sleep_. Honestly. Four days?"

Bruce shrugged. "I've gone far longer than that more often than you'd think. Now be quiet; I told Oliver I'd finish this report."

Clark sighed and with his left hand cracked open a paperback Lois had gotten him last week. It was very good, and he was absorbed within a few pages. Around him, Wally and Shayera dozed off, still tired from nights of sleeping in the Ghirrans' curved rock-hard beds.

***#***

"We're home," Diana said.

Clark looked up from the last chapter of his book. There was no way six hours had passed—and yet here they were in the Watchtower docking bay.

Diana was standing in the aisle next to him, smiling.

"What?" Clark asked.

"You must have been pretty absorbed in that book," she said, and pointed towards the window. Wally snickered.

Clark looked over and found Bruce snuggled up and asleep against his shoulder. He looked utterly peaceful, mouth slightly open and bangs falling in his face. Basically as un-Batman-y as was possible. Diana borrowed Wally's cell phone and snapped a picture.

"I need evidence," she said.

"He'll kill you for doing that," Clark shifted and froze when Bruce mumbled something in his sleep. He handed Diana his book and carefully lifted Bruce off the chair. If he moved slowly…

Batman's eyes opened in a snap. "Put me down. Now."

"Go back to sleep," Clark said, "You were much cuter then."

"I am _not_ cute. Ever," Bruce gave him a glare that could freeze lightning and wriggled out of his arms. "And I wasn't sleeping."

"You have corduroy lines on your cheek from Clark's jacket," Diana said. Bruce touched his face, grumbled, and tried to rub the print off.

"And I have a picture!" Wally said, bright as ever. Then he saw Bruce's face and started running.

"GIVE ME THE PHONE, WALLACE!" Bruce bellowed and lunged at him. Wally dashed out of the Javelin, with the Dark Knight in close pursuit.

Clark sighed and turned to Diana, "At least the quiet was nice while it lasted." Then he went to save Flash from Batman.


	7. War Pt 1

**A/N: There's always a couple "one-shots" that end up being longer; this one will be a two-part piece.**

**I love the Bruce-Wally dynamic. Clark might not. **

~War~

"This is the last straw!"

Clark looked up from the reports he was filling out to see Bruce thunder into the room. He sighed. His long day was about to get a lot longer.

"First it was those stupid jokes! Then my costume! Then the cake!" Bruce was nearly red in the face. "And now _this_!"

"Wally, I take it?" Clark could guess just from Bruce's level of exasperation, though he had no idea what 'cake' was supposed to refer to.

"Look at what he did!" Bruce held his hands up.

Clark tried to figure out what he was supposed to be looking at. "He turned something of yours invisible?"

Bruce glared at him. "This is no time to be funny, Kent. This is a serious matter."

Clark squinted. Even with x-ray vision, Bruce looked to be the same to him. "I give up—what I am I supposed to be incensed by?"

"He shortened my belt on one side by three quarters of a centimeter," Bruce said. "Now it's asymmetrical."

Clark blinked, then erupted. "How can you even _tell_?"

"I have carefully calibrated the weight on both sides for even distribution," Bruce explained, in a tone that implied Clark was about four years old. "and anyway, if your belt was off by three quarters of a centimeter you'd be able to tell, too."

"Um, no, I don't think so," Clark said, and tried to go back to his report.

"It's a significant danger. Being unbalanced by a few grams can prove life or death in the event of having to stand on a filament of less than a fourth of an inch," As if to demonstrate this, Bruce yanked at his belt, trying to get both the snap in the back and the emblem in the front to lie dead center.

"Bruce, when will you ever need to balance on a rope that small?" Clark rubbed his eyes.

Bruce looked surprised at this, as if he wondered how anyone could have missed it. "It's part of a scenario involving white Martian cloning, radiation from the moon, and contaminated pastries."

Clark suddenly realized why Alfred drank so much tea. "What do you want?"

"Talk to Wally," Bruce said. "For some inane reason, he actually listens to you. Maybe it's a subconscious impulse to do the opposite of rational society."

"Well, I'd like to think rational society listens to me," Clark said, trying very hard to project an 'I have to work on this' vibe.

"It doesn't," Bruce informed him.

"I must be a masochist," Clark muttered. At Bruce's confused look, he continued, "There has to be some explanation for why I don't avoid your company."

"I certainly didn't start it," Bruce said. "You're the one who suggested the continued team-ups."

Clark wanted very much to be out of this conversation. "Look, Bruce, I'm busy. Just go change the cafeteria menu to some food Wally really hates and then you'll be even, okay?"

Bruce paused. "That's an excellent idea." He raced out of the room.

"That's what I'm here for," Clark said to himself, and wondered how many bottles of aspirin he'd have to take for it to affect him.

***#***

The next person to storm in was Diana, three hours later. She snatched the papers out of Clark's hands, and slammed her fist down on the keyboard to shut off the monitor. "Please tell me why on earth you would throw gasoline on this particular fire."

"Excuse me?" Clark said.

"I've just been speaking with Wally," Diana was absolutely glaring at him, "Apparently Bruce broke into Wally's apartment, took every single item out of the pantry and hot-glued them to the ceiling in the three-story foyer."

"How is this my fault?" Clark asked, and tried to take the papers back from her. He failed.

"Bruce says it was your idea," Upon closer examination, Diana looked utterly exhausted, but Wally tended to do that.

"That's not what I said!" Clark protested. "Honestly, did he even listen to more than two words?"

"I'm not finished," Diana said. "After Wally finished scraping his groceries off the ceiling, he went to Wayne manor and rearranged all the furniture. Everything. All 189 rooms."

"Bruce went nuts, didn't he," Clark suddenly knew where this was heading. And if he was right, all hell was about to break loose.

"They've declared open hunting season on each other," Diana said.

Suddenly the intercom crackled. Batman's voice came on, sounding like he was barely containing murderous rage, "Attention all League members. If you see the Flash, he is to be forcibly brought to Lab 1 for execution ASAP, or there will be consequences. Also, all Playdough, red food coloring, and artificial mucus is to be destroyed. Immediately."

"This is how it begins," Diana said, and walked out. Clark got up too, and went to see if he could possibly forestall a nuclear disaster.

***#***

He found Wally first, by following the sounds of enraged howling.

"Look at this!" Wally yelled. "He's insane!" He pulled out his ring to display how Batman had apparently replaced all the costumes with Robin suits.

Clark sighed. "He chooses to have a sense of humor now?"

"It's not funny!" Wally looked like he was about to rip his hair out.

"Then apologize!" Clark shouted. "Just knock it off and we'll all end up happy."

"Absolutely not—I am not giving in!" Wally slammed his fist in his palm. "Bats is going down!"

**End Part 1**


	8. War Pt 2

**A/N: Sorry to anyone who got spammed when I had to repost all the chapters to this. What happened was I realized that was deleting the symbol I'd used to denote time breaks and therefore everything looked like one continuous stream. I'm debating whether or not to go back and do all (!) my previous stories, but I'm think I'll just leave them.**

**Also, I thought I read that Hawkgirl's weapon is connected to her mentally, but I could be wrong. If anyone can refute/verify, comment please!**

~War Pt. 2~

An emergency Founder's meeting was called, with the exception of Batman and Flash, of course. Hawkgirl arrived positively furious, her mace crackling from the telepathic backwash.

"Do you know what he did!" she roared. "He snuck into my room and tried to take my molting feathers while I was sleeping because he noticed that Bruce has no down pillows and thought he might be _allergic to it_! He tried to _pluck_ me!"

"Wally did this?" Diana asked.

Hawkgirl just snarled.

"Actually, Bruce doesn't have down pillows because he doesn't like how the feathers sometimes leak out," Clark offered. "I think the only thing he's allergic to is Wally."

"Frankly, I say we just let them beat the hell out of each other," John shrugged. "Maybe then we'll finally get some peace and quiet."

"Yeah, unless they accidentally blow up the Watchtower," Clark said glumly.

On cue, there was an explosion down the hall. Then Bruce, screaming at Wally.

Diana and Clark just looked at each other, mentally playing rock-paper-scissors to decide which one of them had to get up and deal with it now. Clark lost.

He stepped outside and into a cloud of greenish smoke. Not poison—though it did taste strangely like powdered sugar. Bruce and Wally were still shouting at each other.

"Get it back here right now!" Bruce bellowed.

"I'm not giving in to a pointy-eared meanie-head!" Wally yelled back.

"Shut up!" Clark shouted. They both stopped short and stared at him. "What's going on here?"

"He stole my lunch," Wally said, jabbing a finger at Batman.

"Technically, I combusted his doughnuts. A lunch would have to be nutritionally balanced." Bruce had his arms crossed defiantly over his chest. "And he kidnapped the giant penny."

"How in the world did you steal the giant penny?" Clark asked. Wally just shrugged, as if to say 'don't underestimate me.' Clark felt his headache returning. "Look, Bruce, you get Wally a new lunch. Wally, you return the penny, and you'll be even."

He thought, stupidly, that that would work.

"I'm not apologizing," Bruce said, at the same time as Wally said, "Bats has to apologize!"

Clark just gave up and went back to the meeting.

"Any luck?" Diana asked.

"No, but I think we'll need a custodial team down there." He sighed and took his seat beside her. "Did anyone come up with anything?"

A litany of negatives.

"I may have something," Diana said, "but I don't want to use it unless we're desperate."

Clark tried to pry out of her what it was, but she merely smiled and repeated the same vague answer.

***#***

The day Vixen nearly had a nervous breakdown after tripping a booby trap meant for Batman was the day John decided to take a crack at the matter. He tied both Flash and Batman up in an empty storage room and refused to let them out until they called off this idiotic war.

Batman got out of the ropes in under fifteen seconds. Then he proceeded to tie the helpless Wally to the ceiling upside-down by the ankles.

When Clark saw the security footage later, he had to bang his head on the desk and wonder what the hell Lantern had been thinking.

"I think you need to release that secret weapon of yours," he said to Diana later, while they were walking to lunch.

She shook her head. " Not yet. It has to be pretty dire for me to do _that."_

"Care to let me in on what, exactly, _that_ is?" He was getting a little annoyed. Especially after finding Bruce in his room, trying to test his anti-superspeed powder by sprinkling Clark's clothes with it.

"Sorry, I can't disclose that," Diana said. Clark wondered if she'd gotten it from Bruce.

***#***

There was a huge crowd in front of the cafeteria. Grumbling superheroes were beating on the door, barely refraining from breaking the lock.

J'onn was at the front of the crowd. Clark flew over the mass and landed next to him. "What's going on? Why's the cafeteria closed?"

The Martian sighed. "Flash was in the lab next door and he accidentally blew out the wall. There's debris everywhere and we can't fit everyone in the auxiliary cafeteria."

Clark rubbed his temples. "Pray tell, _why_ was Wally experimenting in the lab?"

"Apparently he was trying to make an extremely potent form of itching powder to use on Batman," J'onn's voice stayed the same but somehow he still managed to project an air of irritation.

"I'll go deal with him," Clark promised, though he was wondering why he was always the one to have to deal with these things.

***#***

"Wally." Clark knocked once and let himself in without waiting for a response. "We need to talk."

"Ssh." Wally was hunched over a small terrarium. He was carefully lowering bits of soaking wet bread into it.

"What are you doing?" Clark asked, dreading the answer. Wally leapt up and hid the glass box behind his body. He answered with a guilty, "nothing."

Clark pushed him aside and examined the terrarium. "Wally…are those _bedbugs_?"

Wally shifted uncomfortably. "Would you believe they're for a science project?"

"No." Clark felt heat vision building behind his eyes and pushed it back down. "Wally, this has to stop. You blew out the wall of the cafeteria. Yesterday Bruce set fire to the hydroponics bay trying to capture you."

"The cafeteria _was_ brilliant, wasn't it?" Wally grinned. "Not only did I get the formula for super itching powder but Bats has to fix the wall, too!"

"This is over, Wally," Clark snapped. Wally shut up. "It's stupid, ridiculous, and you're annoying all of us, too. Go apologize to Bruce and end the absurd shenanigans."

"No," Wally said.

"What?"

"I said no." Wally crossed his arms. "We've been over this, Supes. You can't just let a cranky guy in an anthromorphic suit get his way all the time."

"Wally, god only knows how many people have tried to teach Bruce a lesson," Clark said. "You're not going to succeed."

Wally smiled. "Maybe, but who else matches Bats for sheer stubbornness? I can go at this forever."

Then he picked up his terrarium and sped away.

Clark answered, belatedly. "That's what I'm afraid of."

****#****

The bedbugs did not go over well. By midnight Wally had not only earned himself a time in the practice room being forcibly beaten up by Bruce's modified robots but also a dose of his own itching powder. Then Wally reciprocated and Bruce opened his closet to find eighteen pounds of live mice.

On and on it went.

Bruce broke into Wally's apartment and replaced all the furniture with holograms. Wally went to Wayne Manor and stole all the doors. Batman retaliated by installing power dampers in Wally's dorm room.

Flash then decided to coat the floor of the Batcave with a super-slick compound that caused Batman to go flying into the Batmobile and bruise three ribs. Bruce captured Wally while he was sleeping and put him in the holodeck, where he spent eighteen hours fighting Godzilla before realizing it wasn't real.

For two days, Wally didn't strike back. Bruce was his usual arrogant, insulting self, clearly assuming he'd won the war.

"Think I finally broke Wally of his annoyingness?" Bruce was under the Javelin, taking apart the underbelly to fix a broken exhaust pipe.

Clark just sighed and handed him a screwdriver. "I find it disturbing that you're proud of yourself for supposedly breaking Wally of his personality."

"I was justified," Bruce said. Clark heard more clanking under the ship.

"Does that mean I can break you of your irritating personality traits?" he asked.

"You could try," Bruce replied.

The intercom crackled. Wally's voice came on, utterly smug. "Hello all! Welcome to Watchtower Radio!"

Clark heard Bruce mutter grimly under the ship. On the intercom, Wally snickered.

"First up on the music selection…" he paused dramatically. "Is a nice little recording of 'Am I Blue?' by our very own Batman!"

Bruce's head smacked into the underside of the Javelin.

A deep, sonorous voice started singing. Bruce leapt out from under the ship, grease staining his hands and mask askew and _ran_ out of there faster than Clark had thought possible.

So, of course, he had to follow.

Bruce dashed up the stairs towards the broadcast room. The snickers were already starting around them. Clark could only imagine what Bruce would do to Wally once he got a hold of him.

"Wait!" he said. Batman barely glanced back. "So what if Wally got a recording and tells people it's you? No one's going to believe him."

Bruce said nothing. Clark heard the song overhead. The voice _was _quite close to Bruce's…

"Oh my god," Clark stopped short and physically had to stop himself from bursting into laughter. "It is you! You _sing_?"

He saw Bruce turn beet red under the cowl, just as he reached the door of the broadcast room. He tore it open and threw Wally aside, leaping for the disc player.

There was nothing inside.

"Where is it!" Bruce roared, grabbing Wally by the shoulders.

"Hidden," Wally said, and smiled. "If you want it turned off, you'll have to apologize and admit I won."

Bruce turned to Clark, who merely shrugged and stayed by the door. "I told you this wouldn't end well. Nice voice, by the way."

"You're next, Kent," Bruce growled. "Wally! Do you have any idea what I'm going to do to you?"

"It's playing on loop," Wally said, and Bruce went pale.

"Fine!" he said. "Fine, I apologize! You win! For the love of god, please just turn it off!"

Wally obliged, hitting a remote at his side. Bruce lunged at him, and he zipped away. "Remember Bats—I've still got the disc!"

Clark couldn't help it any longer. He leaned against the wall and dissolved into laughter. Bruce's murderous glare just made him laugh harder.

"I'm leaving," Batman said.

Clark wiped the tears of his cheeks. "Bruce, it's really not that…bad…hee hee…_hahaha_!" He utterly failed at keeping a straight face. Bruce stalked out.

Diana appeared in the doorway a few minutes later, when he'd finally been able to collect himself. "I hear Bruce just went down to the Cave."

Clark nodded. "I doubt he'll come back up here again without us having to drag him up."

Diana came in and stood next to him. "I told you I didn't want to do it."

"That was your secret weapon? He'll kill you!" Clark was aghast. "How did you even get it?"

"I was turned into a pig and he had to sing in front of a nightclub to get me back," she shrugged. Clark tried to picture that, got as far as 'Batman singing in a nightclub' and failed. "Don't worry, I'm not the only suspect."

"Who else?" Clark asked.

"I hear Alfred has a large collection of Bruce singing in the shower that he uses for blackmail." Diana smiled. "He offered to let me borrow one of a Katy Perry song, but I figured that I didn't want Bruce to have to commit suicide over this."

"Good choice," Clark said. They both giggled.


	9. One

**A/N: My first SM/LL fic! Yay and eek! Also, I know that songfics are pretty much despised, but I had to try my hand at **_**one**_**.**

**Lyrics are from **_**Big Bad World One**_** by Jonathan Coulton**

~Coffee~

_All alone by the table of food in my wrinkled suit and my borrowed tie__  
__Only thinking of something to say in the moment after the girl walks by__  
__Everyone else is having fun or else pretending to__  
__I eat another crudité_

Clark sighed, standing by the refreshment table with a lukewarm cup of punch and a handful of Chex mix, watching Lois on the other side of the room. Gorgeous as ever.

Eight years. Eight years and she's barely looked his way once. Sure there was the "Hi, Smallville" and the friendliness, but if he so much as brought up "Hey, want to get dinner?" she turned so cold so fast that it was worse than arctic breath.

The door to the staff lounge swung open, heads turned. Clark looked over and saw Bruce Wayne stride in. For a minute he was confused, then realized it probably wasn't too unusual for the owner of a newspaper to show up at its 75th anniversary party.

Of course, Bruce went right to Lois, put an arm around her waist, and said, "Hey, Lois, how about a kiss for old times' sake?" She laughed and kissed him on the cheek.

Clark felt the Chex mix turn to dust in his hand. He glared at Bruce. Maybe he didn't realize how absolutely annoying that was, how he was just rubbing it in that he'd gotten farther than Clark ever had (or most likely, would)…

Bruce turned around, saw Clark, and grinned. Of course the bastard knew what he was doing. __

_I quit, I'm done__  
__Cause I don't think it's gonna turn out OK__  
__It's no fair, it's no fun__  
__If every time it's gonna end the same way:__  
__Me zero__  
__Big bad world one___

_At the office we're all having cake cause it's someone's birthday, I don't know who__  
__Got my plate and I'm scanning the room and the only seat is right next to you__  
__I get the nod, the tiny smile that doesn't come with teeth__  
__Maybe you don't know who I am___

When he'd really fallen for her was six months after he'd started at the Planet, at lunch. They were all gathered around sharing a dry cake for John-someone-or-other. He'd been aching to get off his feet (three days of no sleep and crimefighting will do that to you, even with superpowers).

There was one empty chair, and she was right next to it. He caught sight of her face for the first time and stopped dead. At the time she'd been dating a guy from the marketing department, Bill. Not a bad guy, but he caught Clark looking at his girl and gave him a look to freeze napalm.

Lois had turned around then, and given him a little half-smile. Friendly but indistinct.

Later, he wished that he had sat down next to her. But Superman was the brave one, and Clark Kent was a wimp.

_I quit, I'm done__  
__Cause I don't think it's gonna turn out OK__  
__It's no fair, it's no fun__  
__If every time it's gonna end the same way:__  
__Me zero__  
__Big bad world one___

_Staying inside, lying in bed__  
__Noticing something that's not there__  
__Follow my heart, follow my head__  
__I'll follow anything that might get me somewhere_

Of course, nothing had worked as Clark Kent. She thought of him as a nice guy at best, and someone to offload a bad story on at worst. Meanwhile, it was a good thing he had superspeed because otherwise he'd never get anything done from staring at her.

So he'd started romancing her as Superman. It started off light at first, then maybe a little more serious—a rooftop kiss here or there, nothing intense.

Soon, though, he saw how he'd screwed up epically. She fell for Superman, of course, and Clark was regulated even further into the deathland of eternal Friendship-ville. Meanwhile, he still kept seeing her as Superman. He couldn't resist.

One day, he'd nearly left a picture of himself changing into costume on her desk, just to see what would happen if she found out. He never knew if it would have worked, because he chickened out at the last minute. __

_Catch her eye when she's pouring my coffee and search my head for an opening line__  
__But I see by the look on her face if I keep my mouth shut I'll save some time__  
__What if the best that I can be just isn't good enough?__  
__Isn't it better not to know?__  
_

The day she broke up with her latest boyfriend he seized his chance and walked up to her while she was pouring herself a cup of coffee in the break room. He held out his mug, put on his best smile. "Can I have some?"

She glared at him but snatched the mug away, filled it up, and slammed it down on the cupboard in front of him.

"I'm sorry to hear about you and Dave," he said. Lois just picked up her mug and took a deep drink. He tried again: "So, I was wondering if you like to—"

"Shut it, Smallvile," she snapped. "If I were interested you would already know."

She stormed off, leaving Clark standing sadly with his cup of burnt coffee.

___I quit, I'm done__  
__Cause I don't think it's gonna turn out OK__  
__It's no fair, it's no fun__  
__If every time it's gonna end the same way:__  
__Me zero__  
__Big bad world one_

The day he had to admit he lost was when he realized that she'd said "Hey, Smallville" to him exactly 2,700 times with exactly the same lack of anything more than mild amusement. When four hours later she asked him why he was so depressed he just shrugged and got out of there as fast as possible. He even volunteered to take Flash's monitor duty shift to have and excuse to get out of having to work on a story with her.

He went up to the Watchtower and sat down at the computer, feeling utterly sad and apathetic.

"If you just manned up and stopped acting like such a whiny farmboy, you might actually get somewhere with her."

Clark jumped and found Batman standing behind him. "Damn, Bruce, stop doing that! And I'm _not _depressed over Lois."

Batman scoffed. "Says the man who's been laying in his bed every night for days writing 'Lois' in the air with heat vision."

Clark stopped short. "Have you been spying on me?"

"Please." Bruce waved him off. "I spy on everyone."

"Just leave me alone." Clark spun around in his chair and pointedly ignored him.

"Okay, I won't tell you about the date with Lois that I set up for you." Bruce shrugged theatrically, as if none of this mattered one way or another, and walked out the door.

"WAIT!" Clark shouted, after he'd processed that sentence.

Bruce poked his head back in the door. "Yes?"

"What date with Lois!" Clark resisted the urge to leap out of his seat.

"She owed me a favor, and I told her that I owed you one," Bruce said. "Therefore, you two have a reservation tonight at seven at the French place on fifth."

"Really?" Clark asked. "You're not screwing with me, are you?"

"Nope." Bruce tossed him a card with the restaurant's address on it. "You're inefficient when you're moping. Also, I was just tired of seeing you depressed."

"That's actually really kind of you, Bruce," Clark said.

"No, you were just being annoying," Bruce replied. "It's six now, you'd better get going. And do try to act a little less Kent-y, you do want to impress this woman."

"Thank you!" Clark leapt out of his seat and ran to the transporter. He had to iron his suit, dig out his cufflinks, find that cologne Ma had given him two Christmases ago….

Behind him, he heard Bruce chuckle.


	10. Christmas

**A/N: ****This is inspired by Alex Ross' JLA Christmas painting.**

~Christmas~

Wally skidded into the meeting wearing a Santa hat and hauling a tree behind him. "Look guys! I helped this guy hauling pines and he gave me one! We can put it in the main hall and have a present exchange, or secret santa or both and we—."

"Sounds like a great idea," Clark said, and pushed away a couple branches of the tree so he could actually see Wally. The conference room wasn't that big and Wally had had to wedge it in sideways. Still, the thing looked to be about twenty feet tall and ten wide. "Just get that out of here before Br—."

"What _is _this?" Bruce roared. The doors to the room slid shut and he was trapped between the tree and the door. Clark sighed.

Bruce shoved his way between the branches and grabbed Wally. "Get this out. Now."

"Lay off, he was just trying to be cheery," Clark stood up from the table and picked up the tree. "Something you might try doing."

Bruce muttered _screw you_ just loud enough for Clark to pick up on, and sat down.

After Clark had flown the tree to the main hall, Diana took out the minutes. "All right, so holiday plans?"

Clark pulled a sheet from under the desk. "Well, we've got the tree from Wally, and Stargirl is organizing a gift exchange, and I think Captain Atom said he could procure some lights…"

"_Why_ are we discussing this?" Bruce asked. "Are we supposed to be doing something _important_?"

Clark sighed. "If you want to excuse yourself, then by all means leave. We'll be here enjoying the spirit of the holidays."

Batman snorted.

Diana smacked the minutes back down on the table and crossed her arms. "Honestly, do Alfred and the boys put up with you being such a killjoy this time of year?"

Bruce said, and got up. "I've got more important things to do than this." He walked out with no further ado.

"Any chance of his heart growing three sizes too big?" Wally asked.

Clark just shook his head sadly.

***#***

It was the week before Christmas, and the Watchtower was dressed to the nines. Wally's tree had turned out beautifully with red and gold tinsel and over a hundred ornaments. Captain Marvel had put out menorahs in the main hall windows and Stargirl had painted the rest like stained glass.

"Hey, you guys want to come over Christmas Eve?" Clark, John, Wally, and Diana were admiring the tree. "Ma said she'd bake apple pie and ham."

"As if I'd pass that up!" Wally said.

Diana laughed. "You'd better tell your mother she'll need more than one ham. "

Someone sighed darkly behind then. Clark didn't even have to turn around to know who it was. "Don't worry," he said. "I wouldn't dare invite you."

Bruce glared at him and kept his arms crossed.

Wally, John, and Diana took the opportunity to very quietly leave. Clark nearly followed but decided to take one last crack at Batman.

"Come on, Bruce," he said, gesturing to the tree. "Everyone likes Christmas. Christmas is great."

"Christmas sucks." Bruce stared up at the glittering lights, and actually grimaced.

"As if," Clark said. "I'm sure Alfred makes a turkey, and mashed potatoes and the boys are both perfectly jolly. I hear Dick has been on you to watch _It's a Wonderful Life_ for years."

"Hmph," Bruce said.

"I heard Gotham Park has a skating rink," Clark tried one last time. "I bet Tim would love to be skating _without_ being in pursuit of a supervillian."

"Hmph."

"Is that all you can say?" Clark teased. Bruce just stood silent. "Fine, Bruce okay? I give up."

Clark left too, so Bruce was alone in front of the tree.

***#***

It was Christmas Eve. Ma and Pa Kent were in Metropolis cooking (extra, thinking of Wally) dinner. The others were in the living room, with cups of hot cocoa and peppermint cookies.

"Out!" Ma Kent shooed her husband and son into the living room. "There's only room for one of us in here and neither of _you_ can cook."

Diana pulled him under the mistletoe and kissed him on the cheek. "Did you invite Bruce?"

Clark shook his head. "I didn't try."

"Oh, well," Diana handed him a cup of hot chocolate. "I'm sure Alfred will succeed where we can't."

"Yeah." Clark sipped the from the mug. Something was bothering him….he put the mug down on the side table and headed for the balcony. "I'll be right back guys."

He stepped outside and jumped into the air, soaring towards Gotham at mach three. Wayne Manor was coming up fast. The first thing he noticed was that all the lights were out. He stepped through a third floor window.

It was freezing inside, barely warmer then outside. Clark shivered and listened for Bruce. He heard him in the basement (the actual basement, not the secret one) cursing over something. Quietly and carefully, he climbed down the stairs.

Bruce was standing in front of the furnace with a wrench, smeared with black grease. He was trying to pry the front panel off the furnace.

"You need some help there?" Clark asked.

Bruce whirled around. "What are you doing here? You're supposed to be in Metropolis."

"I thought I'd stop by," Clark said, and looked into the furnace. He saw the problem—a busted tube deep in the guts of it.

"Well everything's peachy." Bruce turned back to the furnace and gave the panel a good whack with the wrench. It fell off and landed squarely on his foot. "God_damn_."

"Here." Clark reached into the furnace and pulled out the broken hose. "This is the problem."

"Ah." Bruce held the hose for a minute then tossed the useless thing onto the floor. "Well, I suppose I've got to have another of those around somewhere."

He turned and started rooting around in various boxes. Clark waited a few minutes before asking what he wanted. "Bruce—where are Alfred and the boys?"

"Around," Bruce said.

"Don't lie to me." Clark took the wrench from him.

Bruce looked over his shoulder at him and ignored the question.

"Bruce."

He spun around. "Alfred is in England. The boys are having Christmas with the Titans. Okay? Anything else you desperately need to know?"

Clark was actually a little taken aback. "You were going to just spend Christmas alone in here?"

"Don't be silly," Bruce said. "I was going to go on patrol and try to clear up some cold cases."

"Bruce, that's a terrible way to spend the holidays." Clark watched as Bruce turned his back to him and studiously pretended not to be interested in the conversation.

Bruce rifled through another box. When Clark didn't say anything else he stood up and turned around. "Its fine, Clark. I'm used to it, okay?"

"Why didn't you come with us?" Clark was now a bit horrified too. Bruce still wasn't meeting his eyes. "Ma made plenty of ham. Hot chocolate, also. You don't need to spend the holidays all alone up here."

Bruce shrugged, shoulders slumped. Clark saw a hint of what he was trying to hide.

"No, I'm serious—."

"I know you don't want me around."

"What?" Clark asked.

"I'm not that fun to be around, okay? I get it." Bruce did the little shrug-thing again, a bit sad and more than a bit depressed. Clark saw where the Christmas-hating came from now. "You don't have to spend Christmas with me out of duty."

"Duty?" Clark asked. "_Duty_? Yes, you could definitely stand to be a tad less grouchy—okay, a lot less grouchy-but Bruce, honey, we like you."

"Really?" Bruce asked.

"Would I be standing here trying to get you to come home with me if I were lying?" Clark tossed the wrench on top of the broken hose and held out his hand. "Come on. Ma's been asking about you."

"All right," Bruce said. Clark was pleased to see a wisp of a smile play across his face. "On two conditions."

"What would those be?"

"First, I'm flying the plane, not being carried." Bruce's expression turned serious. "And second, you are never, ever going to call me _honey _again."

"Okay," Clark said, and watched as Bruce practically dashed to the Cave to get the batplane.


	11. Hope

**A/N: I liked the SMLL one, so of course I had to do a BMWW songfic. No hate mail, please.**

**Lyrics are from "Long Day" by Matchbox Twenty (with slight editing)**

~Songfic~

_It's sitting by the overcoat,__  
__The second shelf, the note she wrote__  
__That I can't bring myself to throw away__  
__And also__  
__Reach she said for no one else but you,__  
__Cause you won't turn away__  
__When someone else is gone_

Bruce stormed into Clark's dorm with a stack of papers and a glare that could have frozen over an ocean. "You forgot to do the schematics for the new Javelin. I need them. Now."

Clark calmly took the kettle off the stove and poured the hot water into a couple of mugs. "Sorry, I'll do it. I just got back from Metropolis, actually. Lex tried to take the place over again."

"Why would you even turn in a report unfinished? You're usually not _this_ idiotic-."

"Tea?" Clark asked, and slid on of the mugs across the table. Batman stopped short, and picked up the hot cup of earl gray.

"I snap at you and you offer me tea?"

"I learned from Alfred," Clark said. Bruce just looked at him. "Bruce, Di talked to me."__

_I'm sorry 'bout the attitude__  
__I need to give when I'm with you__  
__But no one else would take this shit from me__  
__And I'm so__  
__Terrified of no one else but me__  
__I'm here all the time__  
__I won't go away__  
__It's me, and I can't get myself to go away__  
__Oh God I shouldn't feel this way__  
_

The mug hit the tabletop with a dull thunk. Bruce looked down, away, anywhere but Clark's face. Finally he just picked up the cup again and took a sip, as much an admission of defeat as Clark was likely to get. "What did she tell you?"

"She said things weren't going well between the two of you."

Bruce shrugged. "She doesn't want to see me anymore."

"Now that's not what she—"

"She was being _kind_, Kal."

___Reach down your hand in your pocket__  
__Pull out some hope for me__  
__It's been a long day, always, ain't that right__  
__And no Lord your hand won't stop it__  
__Just keep you trembling__  
__It's been a long day, always ain't that right_

Clark picked up his own mug, sipped the tea while considering what to say. "Bruce, she loves you. She's not leaving you."

"She _thinks_ she loves me." Bruce stared into his cup.

"You always have to think the worst of the world, don't you?" Clark asked, half teasing and half chiding. "If you want this, you actually have to be willing to contribute to a relationship. Like not ignoring her half the times you're together."__

_Well I'm surprised that you'd believe__  
__In anything that comes from me__  
__I didn't hear from you or from someone else__. __  
__So what, so long_

"So you agree with her!" Bruce said.

"Yes."

"But you're talking to me. And making tea."

Clark smiled. "That's a cultural phenomenon known as 'friendship'."

Bruce looked down again. "Don't tease."

"All right." Clark set his mug down on the countertop and leaned forward. "Maybe I don't want to see you screw up your relationship with a woman who truly likes you and who I know _you_ like, too."

___Reach down your hand in your pocket__  
__Pull out some hope for me__  
__It's been a long day, always ain't that right__  
_

"I seem to be an expert at that," Bruce shook his head. "I think you're too late."

"Go talk to her. Take her out to dinner. _Apologize_." Clark put as much emphasis on the last word as he dared.

"It won't do any good," Bruce said. "She was really mad this time. You weren't there. I think I messed it up."

Clark smiled, just as someone knocked on the door. Bruce jumped, nearly spilling tea all over the counter, and watched suspiciously as Clark went to open the door. "Hey, come on in."

Diana stepped through the door and stopped short when she saw Bruce at the counter. They both stood silently appraising each other.

"She was coming over to give me the Javelin blueprints," Clark said to Bruce. He waved Di over to the kitchen. "But since you're both here, I guess I'm kind of redundant."

Bruce glared at him. "I know what you're doing here, Kent."

Diana rolled her eyes and sighed. Bruce stopped talking. Clark groaned inwardly—he was expecting at least Diana to have warmed up a little. If neither of them would talk to each other…Diana threw the blueprints on the coffee table and turned to leave.

"Di," Bruce said, suddenly. She turned back around. "Don't…" he broke off, and looked down at the ground again. "I'm sorry. Please don't go."

Diana melted at that, the cold look giving way to a brilliant smile. Clark, forgotten by both of them, grinned and quietly slipped out the door. __

_Reach down your hand in your pocket__  
__Pull out some hope for me._


	12. Thing

**A/N: I have no idea where this came from. Seriously. You have been warned. For those of you who hated my last crackfic-esque thing, this isn't for you either. Also, I know the whole BMWW thing contradicts my last fic, but these aren't meant to be chronological. **

~Fetish~

Clark couldn't help but listen as a bickering Green Lantern and Batman entered the cafeteria.

"All I'm saying is that you can't lecture me on my love life when you can't even acknowledge that you enjoy the presence of _your_ girlfriend," john angrily picked up a tray and smacked a can of Sprite down onto it.

"I don't have a girlfriend." Batman, stoic as always, cut in front of him and took a bottled water. John's eyes flashed. Clark just shook his head and smirked. Wally, seated across the table, looked confused but shrugged and shoveled more pasta into his mouth.

"Then what do you call Diana?" John asked.

"Well, either Diana or Wonder Woman, depending on the situation," Bruce replied. Clark chucked. Wally glanced up, even more confused.

"You _know_ what I _mean_," John paid for his lunch and started towards Clark's side of the cafeteria. "You two have been flirting mercilessly ever since the Thanagarian Invasion. Hell, ever since that incident in Gorilla City."

Batman shrugged as if this was in no way relevant.

John put his tray down next to Clark. "He's nuts."

"This is news?" Wally asked. Bruce sighed and set his tray down on the other side of Clark.

"You can't even admit to liking her and yet you keep giving me that little smirk whenever I take Vixen out." John glared at Bruce, who merely shrugged again. He turned to Clark. "Come on, you see it too."

"I'm staying out of this." Clark said, after getting a look from Bruce.

"Diana is a respected colleague and a friend." Bruce cracked the seal on his water. "Nothing more.'

Clark muttered something under his breath. Bruce turned to him sharply. "What?"

"I said, maybe you'd like her a bit more if she wore black leather and/or tried to kill you." Clark looked right back at him and took a bite of his sandwich.

"What's that supposed to mean?" A black-gloved hand slammed down on the table.

"You've got a thing for the bad girls, Bruce."

Batman's eyes narrowed. "I do not."

"Really?" Clark asked. "Because I can hear your heartbeat every time Selina walks into a room."

"Who's Selina?" Wally asked, his mouth full of pasta.

"Catwoman," Superman explained, before Bruce could snap at him. Wally's eyes widened.

"Woah, Catwoman? The one with all the leather and the whip and the tiger?" Wally asked. "Bats, that's…"

Bruce nearly lunged over the table. "Wally. Leave now."

"Calm down, Bruce," Clark said, grinning. "You're only upset because you know it's true."

"It is not! Name one other person-"

"Talia," Clark said. Bruce glowered.

Wally's eyes got even wider. "Talia _al Ghul_? The _terrorist_?"

"There was Andrea, too," Clark said. "Come on, admit it, Bruce. The reason you insist you don't like Diana is because she's too good."

"All you have is a series of unrelated women," Bruce said, jaw set. "I've dated plenty of others, too."

"Like that security footage of you making out with Cheetah?" Clark asked. Bruce nearly knocked over his water. "Cause that was looking pretty steamy."

"I did that so you people wouldn't get your idiot asses blown up!" Bruce snapped.

Wally made a face. "Cheetah? Um, wasn't she all furry and stuff?"

"Guys, calm down," John said. "I was just trying to get him to stop the whole you-should-be-with-Hawkgirl thing. Really, we don't need to delve into his love life."

Bruce and Clark ignored him. Batman growled at Superman and Wally nearly ducked. "Well, it's better than having your freaky little letter fetish."

"Excuse me?" Clark said.

"Every one of your girlfriends, ninety-five percent at least, have the double-L initials." Bruce said. "Lois Lane, Lana Lang…"

"That's a coincidence," Clark said, crossing his arms.

"Really?" Bruce smiled. "What about that mermaid chick you dated in high school before she had to return to the sea or whatever. What was her name? Lauren? Lari?"

"Lori Lemaris," Clark said, with a slightly wistful expression on his face.

"You dated a mermaid? Wasn't that awkward?" Wally was obviously quite enjoying himself. "Was she Aquaman's cousin or something?"

"I hardly think Lori can compared to Cheetah," Clark said.

"For the last time!" Bruce exclaimed. "I did that so you wouldn't get blown up by a bomb you were apparently too dumb to sense! It was in a ticking gold suitcase for chrissakes!"

"But she was fuzzy," Wally said.

Clark smiled and turned to John. "Maybe we could get him to ask her out if she somehow got ahold of one of Catwoman's outfits. That leather's awful tight."

"You leave me out of this," John said.

Bruce stood up, tossing his tray onto a nearby trashcan. "I'm leaving," he announced. "I hope this will end this pointless conversation."

As he left, Clark called after him. "The Halloween party is in two days, you know."

"I have monitor duty, and wouldn't come anyways," Bruce said. "So I don't know why you're alerting me to this fact."

Clark just smiled. Bruce shook his head and laughed.

*****#*****

Two days later, Batman was seated in the monitor room when someone knocked on the door. It swung open to show Diana in a tight, black leather Catwoman costume, complete with the whip snug around her waist.

Bruce tried to shut his mouth and failed.

"Hi," she said. "I know Halloween isn't your thing, but since she's your villain, Clark thought I should ask you how it looked."

"Ah," Bruce said, trying to formulate a coherent thought.

"The theme for the party is Villains," Diana explained. "This was Clark's idea. Wally went as Gorilla Grodd."

"Ah," Bruce said.

Diana gave him a weird look. Meanwhile, Bruce was staring at the zipper up the front of the costume, which she'd left very, very low.

"Hello, Bruce?" Diana snapped her fingers in front of his face. Bruce jumped. "Well, what do you think?"

"Um, its, um..." Bruce swallowed and tried again. "It looks very nice on you."

Diana looked at him again. "Are you all right? You're blushing."

"I'm fine," Bruce said, very quickly pulling the cowl back over his face. "It's just…um…hot in here."

Diana smiled and put her hand on her hip. "Clark thought you'd like this."

Bruce looked down at the keyboard, thinking very violent thoughts of what he could do with a nice chunk of kryptonite. Diana put her hands around his neck and leaned over him. "Maybe I could skip the party and help you out here."

She smiled and locked her arms around his chest. "I bet we could find something fun to do."

Bruce couldn't help but agree.


	13. Attic

**A/N: I feel like I say this every time I post, but this took way longer than I expected. Most of it was due to exams and this insane essay I had to write, and this had to be put on the back burner for awhile. **

***Sadness Warning***

~Attic~

Bruce disappeared after the funeral—sometime between Dick and Tim pulling the various casseroles from the fridge and the meal being served. Both boys had red eyes and set faces, either they'd cried enough or they were putting on a strong act for the sake of company.

Diana and Martha were standing by the huge dining room table, talking softly and serving up green beans and fried chicken fresh from Ma's kitchen. Clark handed Wally a cup of coffee and looked around for the patriarchal Bat.

"Excuse me," he said, handing the kettle off to Barbara.

"Off to find Bruce?" she asked. "I swear, if he's in that damn cave at a time like this…"

Clark scanned the floor—nothing. If Bruce were really down there, he'd have the lead shielding up, paranoid as he was. "He's not. I'll find him—at least there's not too much lead in this place. It's a maze already."

Oracle—Barbara, he reminded himself—shooed him off. Dick glanced over at her from across the room. Clark was pleased to see them talking as he mounted the stairs. If there were two people who ought to be together, it was those kids.

He checked the master bedroom first, not that he really expected Bruce to be there. The bed covers were taunt enough to bounce a dime on, more a testament to how long it had been since Bruce had slept in it than his perfectionism.

Next he wandered up to the third and fourth floors. There was more lead paint up here, since the rooms hadn't been renovated.

He swung open the door to what had obviously been Bruce's boyhood room. Grey Ghost and Zorro posters were tacked tilted on the walls, and a toy chest with an action figure sticking out was tucked in the corner.

Most of the furniture was covered in sheets. Clark pulled back the one over the bed to find a spaceship comforter. Without meaning to, he wandered over to the other side of the room an uncovered a train set, one of the elaborate ones with mountains and tunnels. The bookshelf had adventure chapter books and two boxes of comics.

Holding one, Clark wondered if this was what had pushed Bruce towards what he had become. The room was thickly dusty. As much was obvious-Bruce had left one day and never returned.

He carefully replaced the comic and stepped out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

Only one place left to look—the attic. Clark opened the tiny door at the end of the hall and climbed up the stairs. Above it was a maze of boxes and sheets and dust. He pushed through and stopped in the center of the attic.

Bruce was sitting at the far end of the room, on the window seat, his back to Clark. His feet were against the window, knees at his chest, fingernails digging into the ledge beside him. His suit jacket was discarded on the floor. Although he must have heard the door open he didn't say a word, just stayed staring out the grey window.

"I was wondering where you were," Clark said.

"Here," Bruce replied, and didn't turn. His voice was utterly flat, his shoulders tight and hands white on the window ledge.

"I can see that," Clark said softly, and crossed half the distance between them. Bruce's hands closed into fists.

"Where's Diana?"

"Downstairs, why—"

"Good," Bruce snapped.

"Why are you up here all alone?" Clark asked. "Dick and Tim will be looking for you. You can't just leave them to handle everything."

"I _wanted_ to be alone," Bruce said. The flatness was cracking a little at the edges. "I'll be down soon. You make it sound like I've abandoned them or something. Honestly, I—"

He broke off suddenly. It looked like the ledge was about to snap under his hands. Clark sat down next to him.

Bruce turned his face away.

Clark put his arm around Bruce's shoulders. Bruce didn't respond. Clark could hear him controlling his breathing—small, even breaths that didn't reveal a thing.

"You're not getting rid of me," Clark said, and tucked Bruce's bangs away from his face. "No one is expecting you to be so stoic, Bruce. Your _father_ died."

Bruce grit his teeth together so loud Clark was pretty sure he'd have heard even without powers.

"I'm not leaving," he repeated.

"Please just go," Bruce whispered, voice cracked. He glanced up at Clark just long enough for him to see the silent tears coursing down his cheeks.

"Absolutely not," Clark said, and suddenly he had Bruce curled up in his arms, crying into his wrinkled suit. He held him as tight as he dared. "It'll be okay."

"No it won't. He wasn't supposed to _die._"

Bruce tried to swallow his tears again and failed, shoulders shaking. He had his head on Clark's shoulder, not meeting his eyes.

Clark stroked his hair. "Alfred had a long life, Bruce, and he wasn't immortal. Surely you knew he was going to pass away someday." He pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket and handed to Bruce.

"Not before I did." Bruce said, as steadily as he could, trying to dry his eyes. "I figured some guy with a mask would get lucky, or…I didn't think I'd have to…_bury_ him, too."

He stopped short again, biting down on his lip hard enough to where Clark though he would draw blood.

"He was happy. He passed away in his sleep—don't you think that's the best way? Painlessly?"Clark asked. "I know you miss him, but you'll make it through, you and Tim and Dick. You'll see."

Bruce sniffled again, and stayed silent. After a minute he pulled away from Clark and stood up, retrieving his discarded suit jacket off the floor.

"I'd better be getting back," he said, and wiped the tears off his face with his sleeve.

"Are you all right?" Clark asked.

"As much as I'll be," Bruce said. His voice was back to its usual steadiness. He threw on the jacket on and left the attic, Clark following. On the way downstairs he ducked into a bathroom and emerged seconds later, all evidence of tears vanished.

"Here," he said, tossing the handkerchief back to Clark. "Honestly, I can't believe you still carry one of those things around."

"Pa does it too," Clark said. "It must be hereditary."

Bruce smiled a tiny bit at that, probably at the possibility of human mannerisms being passed on to an alien. They started down the stairs to the first floor, the sound of people now loud enough to hear.

Second step to the last, Bruce turned to Clark and said, just loud enough for Kryptonian hearing, "Thank you."

Clark nodded, knowing enough not to respond for anyone to overhear. Bruce stayed by his side for another second before stepping into the black-clothed crowd, the Bat persona firmly in place.

*****The End*****


	14. Thanksgiving Redux

**A/N: Thanks to everyone who went back and reviewed my old stories recently; there were several and it was awesome.**

**Also, this story kind of plays off the Thanksgiving story in my last one-shot series, but you don't have to read it to figure out what's going on.**

~Thanksgiving Redux~

Martha Kent finished whipping the cream, then covered the bowl with saran wrap and slipped it in the fridge before turning around to survey the table. Everything was laid out perfectly—the turkey, the many bowls of mashed potatoes (that Wally sure did love them), squash, cranberry sauce, and all the extras.

She reached out to snap off a wilted flower head just as she heard the jets of the Javelin settling down outside. Hopefully Clark would remember not to squash the corn field this time. Jonathan had certainly had a cow about that last year.

The front door slammed against the wall as several dozen bodies leapt in, throwing off coats, hats, interdimensional portal boots, mystical armor, and all the rest of their winter gear. There was certainly going to be a crowd this year: quite a bit of the Justice League, all of the Teen Titans and quite a few other people from several planets whose names she didn't really care to try and pronounce.

First through the door were Clark, Diana, and Wally. Diana handed her a bottle of wine and Wally nearly drooled over the food. Clark got a hug before she saw his muddy boots still on and shooed him out the door to go find Jonathan, who was still puttering around in the barn doing whatever to that darned tractor.

"Stop that," she said to Wally who had nearly stuck his hand in a bowl of potatoes. "Go get everyone in here and then we'll eat."

"Okay!" He ran out and started herding everyone in (with a little tornado at their backs, if necessary). S

"Jonathan!" Forget Zatanna—her husband was the master of magic disappearing acts. She sighed and swatted some of the dust and hay off his jacket. "Honestly! Go get the plates. And you, Clark—where's Bruce?"

"He said he and the boys were coming," Clark said. "They had a case to finish up—."

"It's Thanksgiving!" Ma threw her hands up. "You'd think they don't know how to take a day off once in a while."

"They probably don't," Clark said.

"Then drag them out of that darned cave and let Alfred have a break!" Ma shook her head at her son. "Super-strength is good for more than just beating up rich bald men."

Clark smiled. "They're coming. They just set down the batplane and now Tim is asking when dinner is."

Ma had to glance behind her before remembering that the Bat-boys were probably a good half mile away. Of all Clark's superpowers the one that still tripped her up sometimes was the superhearing. She and Jonathan had had to drive to the next town when he was a boy before discussing Christmas presents.

Someone knocked politely twice at the door. Kara flew down the stairs to open it and Time barreled in, followed by Dick who had a little more restraint, and finally Bruce, who looked like he just wanted out. Ma sighed.

"I thought I got through to that boy last year," she muttered.

Clark shrugged. "It's Bruce, Ma—the first time we met he threw me into a table. And this is a domestic setting, too. He's uncomfortable wherever there isn't anyone to hit."

"Well we'll just have to fix that, won't we." Ma dusted her hands off on her apron and left her son shaking his head.

Out in the living room, the Teen Titans had cornered off the couch for their own territory and had somehow managed to cram ten bodies on it with Tim down on the floor playing marbles with Krypto and Dick getting awful close to Kara's friend Barbara.

Bruce hovered by the doorway with his coat and shoes still on. How he'd managed to tromp through the lawn without getting mud up to his ankles was a mystery Ma couldn't solve.

"Dinner!" she called, and got out of the way before she was trampled. "Fill your plates and pick a seat—there's enough for everyone."

Tim grabbed a plate and piled it high with bits of everything. Diana ruffled his hair as she got her own plate and dragged Bruce to the table. Dick was too busy chatting up Barbara to think about silly things like eating.

Tim almost shoved a chicken wing in his mouth, but Bruce slapped his hand. "They say _grace_ here, Tim. You're not allowed to eat until then."

"What's that?" Tim asked.

"It's that religion thing," Dick explained. "About food and stuff."

"Great Hera." Diana got herself a glass of wine. She glanced down at Bruce's plate, where he'd taken politely small helpings of turkey, green beans, and mashed potatoes. "Aren't you hungry?"

He looked at what was in his hand like he didn't realize how it had gotten there. Man took it from him and added double of everything plus squash, cranberry sauce, casserole, and macaroni, then handed it back. Bruce looked from the plate to Ma and back.

Diana gave her a look that just said _Men!_ They both laughed to Bruce's look of utter confusion. Ma handed Diana a fork and she left to go talk to Clark. It was just Ma and Bruce, alone in the kitchen.

"She's a nice girl," Ma said.

"Yes." Bruce examined his plate like he wanted to eat but wasn't quite sure how to do it in her presence. Instead he took a tiny, uncomfortable sip of wine.

"I hear she's a princess, too."

"That's correct."

Ma cut herself a bite of turkey. "So, when am I going to hear about an engagement between the two of you?"

Bruce choked on his nonexistent mouthful of wine and turned red to his ears. "What?"

Ma cut a green bean in half with the side of her fork. The edges of Bruce's paper plates crushed in his hands. "Bruce, dear, everyone knows you're dating. I've known for two years."

He sputtered. "_Everyone_?"

"Well, Clark does keep me updated," Ma replied. Bruce stared in the living room and zoomed in on Clark with a look of black vengeance. "And also it's just that it's quite obvious, dear. You're practically tongue-tied when she walks into the room."

"That's not—" Bruce started and then stopped short when Diana came in from the living room to refill her wineglass. Ma raised her eyebrow at him and he immediately stopped looking at the space between Diana's neck and waist.

"Um," he continued, when she left. "Um…I was saying that's not true…so…"

Ma smiled, ate her green bean, and left to go see if Tim wanted an early serving of ice cream. Now he was a cute little kid.

A few minutes later, Clark walked in from the front door, staring at the wall to the kitchen. He nearly ran into Green Arrow (who was quite preoccupied with Black Canary). He turned to Ma and handed her then ring she left in the car. He kept turning his head to stare at the wall again.

"Ma," he said. "What did you do to Bruce to make him bang his head against cabinets?"


	15. Proposition I

~Proposition~

Batman walked into the annex breakroom while Clark was pouring himself a cup of coffee. Bruce was carrying a stack of papers as thick as a hardback book and looked uncharacteristically frazzled.

"What's up?" Clark asked, before he took a sip of coffee.

"Not much—more reports to fill out." Bruce handed over the monitor duty listing. "You have to go over that and OK it. Then I've still got to finish updating the computer systems, I'm thinking of proposing to Diana, and the new budget for Wayne Enterprises is up for review."

Clark choked on his coffee. "Did you say you're thinking of proposing to Diana?"

"That is what I said."

"Proposing _what_?"

Bruce gave him a look like he was an utter idiot. "Well, oftentimes when people say 'propose' they mean 'marriage'."

Clark stared at him. "You're going to ask Diana to marry you? When? How? Do you have a ring yet?"

Bruce grinned. Clark saw him blush a little under his mask. "I was going to take her out to dinner tonight. I figure if she says yes then I'll take her to pick a ring out."

Clark sighed and set his cup down. "You can't propose to a girl without a ring, Bruce. It just isn't done."

Bruce shrugged. "Alfred usually picks out gifts. I have no clue how to choose jewelry."

Clark just shook his head. "What time are your reservations for dinner?"

"Seven-thirty."

"Good." Clark gulped down the rest of his coffee, took all of the papers from Bruce and tossed them onto the counter. "We have plenty of time."

Bruce bent down to examine the glass case of engagement rings and wrinkled his nose. "Honestly. You wear crappy suits—how on Earth are you going to help me pick out a ring for Diana?"

"Lois married me, didn't she?" Clark asked. "Obviously I got something right."

Bryce grumbled about annoying Boy Scouts and gave the shopgirl a patented batglare until she shrank away. "I don't know what she'd like. Can't I just get her a gift certificate? Or just take her shopping afterwards?"

Clark ignored him. "Which do you think she'd prefer? Gold or silver?"

"Silver," Bruce said. "It would match her earrings."

"All right," Clark pointed to the left side of the case, where there was a chart of diamond cuts. "Which of these, do you think?"

"Not the triangle ones." Bruce peered at them. "Circle or square, I guess."

"So that leaves that rack," Clark pointed to the upper right. "Which one of that row do you like?"

Bruce look in and grimaced a little. "Eh…that one's nice."

Clark waved the shopgirl over. "Can you size this one to a seven?"

The girl unlocked the case, pulled out the tray, and took the ring from its slot. She squinted at the red tag and went to the computer to look up the stock number. Bruce glanced at Clark.

"How exactly do you know Diana's ring size?" he asked.

"She and Lois share jewelry sometimes." Clark shrugged. "Did _you_ know her ring size?"

Bruce muttered something that basically amounted to 'no.'

The shopgirl came back. "Sorry, this one's already been purchased. We can order it in, though. It'll take only about three weeks."

"That's all right." Bruce turned to Clark. "Maybe the universe is telling me something."

"The universe is _not_ telling you not to marry Diana. You don't even believe in that crap." Clark shook her head at him and thanked the shopgirl. She shrugged and closed the case. "Look you've still got…forty-five minutes."

"It's all right," Bruce said, and sadly walked out the door. Clark followed. Bruce looked at his watch again, like he hoped the time had gone backward and continued back to the car.

"I suppose you could still ask her," Clark said.

"No, you were right."

"It's not the end of the world. Have a nice dinner tonight, and then take her out again when you have a ring," Clark said. Bruce didn't respond. Clark looked behind him and saw him jump into traffic. "Jesus! _Bruce!_"

Bruce dodged a car, hit the other side of the street and ran into an antique shop. Clark looked both ways and crossed at the crosswalk.

"What the hell was that?" He asked, when he finally found Bruce at the counter in the dusty little shop. Bruce didn't bother to answer. "You could have been hit by a car."

Bruce gave him a look. "Really, Clark? _I_ could have been hit by a _car_."

Clark had to admit that it really wasn't very likely.

Bruce held up a small box. "I saw it in the window. Isn't it absolutely perfect?"

Clark looked down at the ring. It _was_ perfect for Diana. It was platinum with delicate filigree around the central diamond and the two smaller diamonds at either side of the large one. "Is it a seven?"

Bruce nodded, smiling more than Clark had seen in quite some time. He pulled out his wallet, keeping a tight hand on the ring, and paid the shopkeeper. Clark was pretty sure it was the first time he'd been paid a couple thousand dollars in cash.

Clark glanced at his watch and then back at Bruce, who was still in jeans and a t-shirt and most certainly underdressed for the restaurant he was taking Diana to. "You have twenty minutes to look professional."

Bruce grabbed the ring and they ran out of the store.

Diana was in a little black dress with the pearl earrings he'd gotten her (or that really, Alfred had gotten her) for Valentine's Day last year. It took all his willpower not to turn and run out the door. His heart was pounding already.

He had the ring in his pocket. All through dinner he would reach for it, then she would smile at him with those beautiful eyes and he would lose his nose. The waiter cleared away their plates and set down two slices of chocolate cake; he realized it was now or never.

"Do I have spinach in my teeth or something?" Diana asked. "You've been looking at me funny all night."

"No, everything's fine, I just—" he pulled the ring out of his pocket but he kept his hand under the table. "Diana, I—"

They both jumped as an explosion and a plume of smoke rose from the center of the city. Two seconds later their comlinks rang. Bruce slipped the ring back in his pocket. They left to toss on their costumes, their desserts uneaten.

It turned out to be a terrorist cell from Kaznia intent on seizing the New York Stock Exchange. It wasn't a hard mission but there was a lot of them, and by the time they knocked the last man unconscious it was one a.m. and they were both dirty and sore. The evening was most certainly over.

That night he lay in bed staring at the ring, sighed, and set it on the bedside table.

Two nights later he decided to adopt a little of Clark's corniness and opened a bottle of wine. He lit several candles, tossed some cooked pasta with sauce and cherry tomatoes in a pan, and was setting the table when Diana knocked on the door.

"Wow," she said. He could say the same about the slim sweater she was wearing. She leaned in and kissed him. "This looks great."

"Thank you," he said. "Dinner's still cooking, but I have some wine…"

Three glasses later they were sitting on the couch, snug up in one corner. He was still wearing his belt, with the ring in one pocket. After dinner…He brushed a lock of hair away from her eyes and kissed her again.

She put her hand on his arm. "Do you smell smoke?"

Before she even finished her sentence the fire alarm started screaming and they were drenched as the sprinklers went off. Bruce leapt up and ran into the kitchen, grabbing the pot of smoking, ruined pasta and dumping it into the sink. The sprinklers kept going. Diana walked in sopping wet, mascara running down her face. Bruce let the pan smoke and turned to her.

"I'm going to put on some dry clothes," she said, pushing wet hair out of her eyes.

"You want to get takeout?" he asked. "I can pick up Chinese."

"That sounds good." Diana smiled. "How about my dorm? It's a little dryer there."

"Sure," he said, and smiled back a little. Diana kissed him on the cheek and left. Bruce took a towel from under the sink and went to see what the damage was.

The rest of the bottle of wine was spilled all over the table. The white placemats were wrecked. All the candles had gone out. Bruce picked up the towel and started cleaning.


	16. Proposition II

~Proposition Part II~

"It's just a couple of mishaps." Clark was doing a poor job of cheering him up. "Bad timing, that's all. Next time don't get drunk while cooking dinner."

"I wasn't drunk," Bruce said. He was perched on the table in the monitor bay. Clark shook his head at him and turned back to the monitor. "I'd only had like two glasses. That's not even enough to get you drunk."

"Just don't hesitate," Clark said. "That's what's going on here. You keep getting cold feet and then blaming it on little things."

"Little things like accidentally screwing up pasta and soaking her?"

Clark gave him a look. "Work with me here, would you?"

Bruce sighed and tossed the ring back and forth in his hands. "Maybe thing is cursed."

Clark rolled his eyes. See? There you go again."

"It just isn't working." Bruce slipped the ring back into his belt. "Maybe I should just stick the ring in a drawer and wait a couple of months."

Clark spun his chair around so he was facing Bruce. "I'll tell you what your problem is. You won't just man up and ask her already. Next time you have a chance—any chance—don't wait for dessert or dinner or whatever. Don't think about it. Just ask her."

Bruce blinked. "I can't _not_ think about it."

"Try," Clark said.

Both their comlinks beeped. Mr. Terrific came on the line. "Superman and Batman—you're needed at the transporter pad. Weather Wizard, Metallo, and a five-story robot are attacking Metropolis. The robot has already crushed the globe atop the Daily Planet building."

Clark sighed. "Perry hates replacing those."

"—anyway, Wonder Woman, Flash, and Shayera are already there." Mr. Terrific paused. "Green Lantern may also be able to lend a hand, depending on how quickly the situation in Star City gets resolved."

The wind howled. This was certainly one of the first hurricanes to hit the center of Metropolis. Batman stared up into the rain and saw Weather Wizard hovering in the eye of the storm. Diana and Clark were trying to take down the robot. Shayera and Metallo were clanging together overhead. Flash was running up a skyscraper to leap off the lightning rod and take down Weather Wizard.

The robot roared, exposing a throat of yellow kryptonite. Clark fell back but it was too late—the robot swung its fist and he went flying towards the ground.

Batman shot a grappling hook and caught Clark as he fell. "You all right?"

"Yeah." Kent shook his head to clear it as Bruce dropped him on the ground. "It's not the deadly stuff. It'll take a minute for my powers to come back, though."

"We'll keep it under control. Go after Weather Wizard." Batman leapt at the robot's leg and drove spikes into its metal shin so he could climb up to the knee. Inside were pumps and gears. He packed a wad of C4 into the crevice by one of the pumps, leapt out of the leg, and let it blow.

The robot roared, falling onto one knee. It yanked Bruce off its leg by his cape. Choking, he cut off the bit it was holding with a batarang and grabbed onto one of the plates of its chest to avoid becoming sidewalk splatter.

Diana ripped off one of the robot's fingers with a yell. Batman climbed up a little more so he was clinging to the robot's collarbone. He wished Wally would hurry up and smack Weather Wizard unconscious so he wouldn't have to deal with the gale-force winds anymore.

Diana was shouting something to him. Even though they were only thirty-five feet apart, he couldn't tell what she was trying to say.

"What?" He yelled. The robot was trying to shake her off. She held on with her legs and cupped her hands around her mouth.

"The head!" she bellowed. "The power source is in the head!"

He gave her the thumbs-up sign and started climbing again against the wind. He got almost up the neck before it slapped him off. He got a line around its arm. His ribs ached where it had hit him.

Diana waved her hand to make sure he was okay, he waved back. She put her fist through the robot's elbow and it grabbed her tight around the waist right before its arm locked at ninety degrees.

Bruce shook himself out of watching her and swung over to help her get out of the robot's fist. He pulled out a laser and started cutting though its fingers. Halfway through Diana burst the hand open, metal flying everywhere. They were both thrown to the ground.

Wally and Clark were wrestling with Weather Wizard. It was now raining and hailing. Lightning cracked across the sky. The winds were so strong Diana couldn't even fly against them. The robot, disabled on one leg, was still blasting buildings and cars. Shayera and GL had already cuffed Metallo and were now herding people away to safety.

Bruce and Diana each grabbed a leg and started up. Batman took pea-sized bits of C4 and stuck them at places where two plates met for a distraction. They reached the mouth and the robot was trying to shake them off but Bruce drove two batarangs into its jaw and held on tight. He tosses a flashbomb into its yellow maw. The heat sealed its sharp plastic teeth together.

He looked over and saw Diana with two fistfuls of steel, determination written all across her face. Spindly arms shot out from the robot's shoulders, trying to entangle her. She let one wrap around her wrist and ripped it out of its socket.

"Di!" he yelled, before he could think through what he was doing.

She looked over at him, still fighting the metal tentacles.

"You want to get married?" he asked.

Diana beat off another tentacle. "What? I can't hear you."

He leapt over to her and ripped out another of the tentacles. Just as the wind picked up again he shouted. "Will you marry me?"

Diana looked at him quizzically and shook her head. "What?"

He tossed an explosive at the robot's eyes. Maybe he could knock the glass out without having to go up there.

"I still can't hear—"Diana started, when the robot summoned its strength and knocked her into the ground. Batman leapt up to the head.

It was desperately trying to get him off now, but he pulled out a particularly long piece of broken tentacle from the robot's shoulder and rammed it through its eye, shattering the glass and tearing wires.

The lights on the robot powered down and it stooped over as its batteries drained hydraulic fluid onto the ground. Bruce paused, standing on its nose. Wally and Clark had taken down Weather Wizard. Shayera and GL were on the ground talking. Diana got up from where the robot had thrown her.

He certainly wasn't expecting the robot's head to explode.

"Bruce!"

He opened his eyes to find himself lying flat on his back staring up at Clark and Diana. She was kneeling next to him. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I just go knocked around a little." He sat up and a stabbing pain ran through his left side. He winced. "Well, mostly all right."

"Broken arm," Clark said, "and a couple of cracked ribs."

Bruce opened his belt one-handedly and slid out the ring case. "Hey, Di, I've been trying to ask you something for awhile and it keeps getting screwed up, so I figure I'll just ask."

He opened up the jewelry box and held the ring out to her. "Will you marry me?"

Diana looked, open-mouthed, from him to the ring and back. The she grabbed his mask by the ears and kissed him hard.

Clark flushed and turned away, muttering _That's not _exactly _what I meant. _Green Lantern looked at Wally, who sighed and handed him twenty bucks. Shayera laughed.

Diana kept her arms around his neck. Wally giggled and started singing, "Batman and Wonder Woman sitting in a tree, _k-i-s-s-i—_"

"Wally," Bruce said. "I'm in a charitable mood right now, but I swear to god, I will break your jaw if you don't stop."

Wally shut up.

"Thank you," Bruce said, and was quite content to let Diana kiss him again.


	17. Drunk

**A/N****: I'm not sure I'm entirely satisfied with this one. No flames, please. **

~Drunk~

Clark was sitting in his dormitory room. He would have liked to get some sleep in his own apartment, but he still had a good inch of monitor duty reports to go over before he could even think of sleeping. He was getting finished with the fourth report when someone knocked on the door.

He opened the door to find Bruce standing in the doorway, no costume on, just jeans and a t-shirt. "Do you have Nesquick?"

"What?" Clark looked at him and saw the bottle of vodka that he was holding by the neck. "Are you drunk?"

"Maybe," Bruce said, and stumbled against the doorframe. Clark sighed and pulled him into the room. Bruce let him. "Sure you don't have Nesquick?"

"Is that what you've been drinking? Nesquick and vodka?" Clark took the bottle from him and set it far, far down the counter. It was half empty. "That sounds disgusting."

"Yeah. I don't like alcohol though." Bruce sat down (fell down, really) on Clark's bed. Clark sighed and got some milk from the fridge.

"I'll make you some Nesquick. _Sans_ vodka," he said. "Now why were you drinking."

Bruce shrugged. Clark tried to gauge if he was truly flat-out drunk or just tipsy. With Bruce it was hard to tell. "Why do I have to have a reason to drink? Plenty of people do it recreationally. Alcoholics don't need a reason to be alcoholics."

"You are not an alcoholic." Clark put the milk up on the stove. "If you're going to come in here and bother me while I'm working on stuff _you_ wanted me to do then you have to be honest with me."

"Vicki broke up with me," Bruce said. He actually did look pretty depressed.

"Vicki _Vale_?" Clark frowned.

"Uh-huh." Bruce kicked idly at the edge of the covers. He wasn't wearing shoes. Clark wondered how Batman had managed to get from one side of the Watchtower to the other drunk and shoeless without him having heard yet.

"I thought you were trying to finesse it so she would break up with you," Clark said. "You told me she was getting too close to finding out about Batman."

"She was," Bruce said.

"So you miss her."

"No, she was a horrible girlfriend." Bruce sighed sadly. "I think maybe the only reason she dated me at all was because she suspected."

"Then why are you upset?" Clark was getting a little exasperated at this point.

"Cause I'm thirty-four years, I don't have a girlfriend, and I spend most nights getting voluntarily beaten up." Bruce fell back onto the bed and sighed again. "And it's all hopeless."

Clark mixed Nesquick into the glass of milk and wondered if chocolate milk was really going to fix this. "It's not all hopeless. You've got Alfred and the boys and us. Maybe if you want a girlfriend you should try dating someone who you won't have to push away when she gets too close to you."

He sat down next to Bruce and handed him the glass of milk. "Sit up and drink this."

Bruce got up, almost fell over, and took the glass. Clark put his arm around his shoulders to steady him. Bruce drank half the glass and stopped. "That's not vodka."

"I told you I wasn't giving you any more alcohol," Clark said.

Bruce sipped the milk and yawned. "You know what we should do?"

"What?" Clark asked.

"We should get married."

Clark looked at him. "Where are you going with this, Bruce?"

"It would be great ," Bruce said, and nearly dropped the glass. Clark caught it and set it on the bedside table. "You're nice to me. We wouldn't have to hide secret identities." He looked intensely sad and put his head on Clark's shoulder.

"This is why you need a girlfriend you actually like," Clark said.

"You're an alien," Bruce said. "You could be a Kryptonese girl, there's really no way for us to know."

"I am not a girl," Clark snapped. "And now I most definitely understand why you don't usually drink."

"I'm sleepy," Bruce mumbled.

"Yeah, so am I," Clark said. "But you had to come in here and interrupt me while I was getting my work done so I could actually get to bed."

"Are you going to be mean to me too?" Bruce asked, "Cause Vicki was plenty for one day."

"If I were going to be mean to you, then I would be filming this." Clark stood up and Bruce toppled over onto the bed. "Honestly. Whatever that girl said sure got into you."

Bruce put his arms around the pillow like it was protection. "She said that I wasn't ever going to find someone because there's not a girl on the planet who would ever want to marry a self-centered, jackass, loser of a moron."

Clark winced. "Ouch."

Bruce nodded, still holding Clark's pillow. He was staring at a point not quite where Clark was standing.

Clark dumped the glass in the sink and wondered how much Nesquick he'd have to eat straight to take enough sugar to stay up all day. "Look, she wasn't talking about you," he said to Bruce. "She was talking about your playboy persona—who, you have to admit, isn't very appealing."

"I think I ought to kill him," Bruce muttered. "A car accident would do it. Band and over."

"Kill _who_?" Clark asked.

"Bruce Wayne," Bruce replied, as if it were perfectly natural. He toyed with the corner of the pillowcase while Clark tried to work through that statement. "Wouldn't it be great? I could take up and alias, have a normal life, not have to pretend to be an idiot all the time…"

Clark set the pan in the sink. "You'd also have to sneak into you own house to get to the 'cave. Tim and Dick would have to pretend you were dead."

Bruce frowned. "I don't like it when you're right."

Clark sighed and sat back down next to him. "You could always spend some more time with us—you know, friends who don't think you're an idiot and whom you actually like, or so I hope."

"you guys couldn't put up with me all the time," Bruce said. "Come on, don't you ever just want to leave everything behind and start somewhere else?"

Clark considered it and eventually shook his head. "Nope. I'm happy where I am."

Bruce looked up at him. "How are you so damned content."

Clark shrugged. "I hang out with people whose company I enjoy, and I actually try for contentedness by not doing things like working twenty hours a day and eating food I like rather than what provides maximum nutritional value."

Bruce scoffed. "You can also work at superspeed and caloric values have no bearing on you."

Clark smiled but it faded after a second. "I also don't push the people I love away and then go on pretending to not be lonely."

Bruce didn't even glance at him this time. Clark stood up, figuring he'd said enough. "I'm going to wash the dishes."

He filled the sink with hot soapy water and started the plates from lunch. The reports were a lost cause at this point—they were just going to have to be late. He expected Bruce to leap up and leave, but when he didn't, Clark just shrugged and figured he'd let him stay there a little longer and hopefully get a little more sober.

When he finished washing the dishes he dried off his hands, walked back to the main part of the room and found Bruce asleep, still holding the pillow. Clark sighed and laid a blanket over him.

Bruce woke up to find himself in Clark's room with a screaming headache and a sour taste in his mouth. He sat up and saw he was still wearing the clothes he'd had on yesterday,

"Breakfast?" Clark asked from the kitchen.

"What?" Bruce squinted at him.

"Breakfast." Clark held up a frying pan full of something Bruce was too bleary-eyed to make out. "It's the most important meal of the day, you know."

Bruce winced in the light.

"I have aspirin, too," Clark said, and filled two plates.

"Sounds good." Bruce got up and stood in the kitchen. Clark handed him a glass of water and two pills. Bruce gratefully took them. Clark pushed over a plate laden with bacon and eggs and pulled a chair up to the counter.

"I slept on the couch," Clark said. "Facing away from you."

Bruce looked at him, his head pounding too much for him to try to figure that out. "_What?_"

"How much do you remember from last night?" Clark asked, trying to phrase everything as diplomatically as he could.

Bruce paused. "Having to do with you? Nothing."

Clark waited until Bruce had a mouthful of bacon in the hopes that he wouldn't get a fork chucked at his head. "You had some…interesting…ideas last night."

Bruce groaned. "I was flat drunk, Clark. Just tell me what the hell I said."

"You said Vicki broke up with you." Clark tried the eggs. He'd overcooked them a little. Bruce didn't seem to mind. "You seemed disproportionately distraught over it. And don't say it's because you were drunk—the very fact that you _were_ drinking shows you weren't happy."

Bruce chose to ignore the subject. "I still don't see what this has to do with you explaining to me where you slept."

"I think you'd prefer I didn't tell you," Clark said. Bruce only nodded. Clark watched him eat and decided to try his luck once more. "You know, you shouldn't have to need to be drunk for us to talk."

"I didn't intend to talk to you," Bruce replied. "Next time you have things to do, lock your door."

"You know what I mean."

"I'm _fine,_ Clark."

Clark put down his fork with a note of finality that made even Bruce look up. "Last night you were curled up on my bed sincerely upset over this girl who you professed to not even really like."

Bruce sighed. "I just spend a lot of time being someone I'm not, Clark. Vicki was just the next in a long line of ex-girlfriends and it was the 'long-line' part that had me more so than Vicki herself."

"You could always try to be someone you did like," Clark said, and scrapped up a last bite of egg.

Bruce stayed silent.

Clark got up to refill his glass.

"John and I went to the future," Bruce said, almost in a whisper. Clark turned around and stared at him. Bruce kept his eyes on his plate.

"What?" Clark almost dropped the dishes. "You guys went to the future and I never heard about it?"

"We're the only ones who remember it." Bruce picked at his eggs, still mostly uneaten. Clark sat back down next to him.

"You were all dead," Bruce said, simply. "And I was alone, and bitter, and I…" He stopped.

Clark waited.

"I scared myself." Bruce finished softly. "I don't…I don't want to become that."

"How exactly did you go into the future?" Clark asked, more than a little disconcerted at the idea of his own death.

"This guy, Chronos, developed a device that let him go time travel and he started screwing things up." Bruce pulled away from him a little. "He tried to steal something from here, we followed him in, ended up in the Old West and then the future. Eventually we stopped him from doing it in the first place."

"So you stopped that future from happening," Clark said.

"It could still happen. I could still screw things up," Bruce said. "There's no proof that the future we saw was fully a product of Chronos's meddling."

Clark put his hand on Bruce's shoulder and Bruce flinched. "You don't have to just go along with what you saw, be it true or not. There's no such thing as fate—if you don't like the future then _change_ it."

He grinned. "Maybe you ought to take Diana out on a proper date."

Bruce smiled a bit, then winced and put his head in his hands. "Damn."

"What is it?" Clark asked, concerned.

"I am very hungover," Bruce groaned.

Clark just laughed.


	18. Shoes

~Shoes~

"You ought to throw out these boots—the soles are coming undone." Diana kicked Bruce's boots off the chair by the batcomputer and sat down. Clark chuckled, perched on the steel examination table and drinking one of Alfred's iced teas. Bruce just sighed and tried to ignore them both.

"Firstly," he said, "I wish the two of you would let me get some work done. Second, my boots are fine. Alfred can always sew them up if there's a small tear."

"How do you even fight in these?" Diana asked. "They're threadbare."

"I like them." Bruce replied.

"He's owned that same pair of shoes for as long as I've known him," Clark said. "It's a lost cause."

"That's eight years!"

"Ten, actually." Clark said. Diana looked both astonished and disgusted. She held up Bruce's boots. There was very clearly a rip at the heel of the left one."

"Bruce," she asked, "did you order these?"

"No, I just bought them and added the pockets and everything." He was trying very hard to concentrate on his armed robbery investigation. "Why?"

"Because you're going to take off that cape and we're getting you a new pair of shoes." Diana hit a button on the computer and the monitor went dark. Bruce turned in his chair, eyes flashing.

"You can't just decide we're going shopping," he said.

"Yes she can." Clark hopped off the table. "She's your girlfriend. She can tell you to wear pretty much whatever clothes she wants you to wear."

"The reason Lois does that to you is because you can't even pick a matching tie." Bruce turned the monitor back on. "I can actually dress myself."

"Hmph," Clark said, but he didn't dispute the fact. Diana wrinkled her nose at the muddy boots and tossed them into the trashcan.

"Hey!" Bruce leapt up and pulled his boots back out and held onto them.

Diana sighed. "Come on, Bruce. You shouldn't keep shoes for a decade."

"Sure you should." Bruce pulled his boots on. "It makes them comfortable."

She just shook her head and turned to Clark. "Could you get Alfred to hold dinner for just an hour?"

Clark shrugged. "Sure."

"Good." Diana grabbed Bruce by the arm and forcibly dragged him out of the cave.

*****#*****

"I can believe you wore those," Diana said when they arrived at the shoe store.

"They're my shoes," Bruce said. He followed Diana in the door and made a face at the rubber smell. "Ergo, I wear them."

"Don't you own tennis shoes?"

"Sure I do. But those are for tennis."

Diana rolled her eyes. "I meant sneakers. You know, everyday shoes other than those boots."

"Oh," he said. "Nope."

"All right then." She rubbed her eyes and scanned the store to find the men's section. There was a pair of black sneakers sitting on the shelf; she pulled them down. "How about these? They look comfortable."

Bruce examined them. "I can't fight criminals in those."

"I _know_. They're sneakers. For walking around so you don't have to wear the same pair of boots every time I drag you to get an ice cream cone." Diana shoved the box at him. "You're trying them on. What size are you?"

"Size?" Bruce bent down to look at his boots. "About seven and a half inches long by three inches wide."

"What?" Diana stared at him.

"That's how pants are sized—length and width." Bruce peered at the shoeboxes like he'd never encountered them before. "I figured shoes are the same way. Your feet are attached to your legs after all."

"Give me your shoes," Diana said.

Bruce took one off and handed it to her. "It won't do you any good—I cut out all the tags after I bought them."

Diana sighed and tried to see if there was a size printed on the soles somewhere. She got stabbed in the finger by a set of hidden lock-picking tools. Nothing. She pointed Bruce to one of the silver measuring tools. "Sit."

Bruce sat and put his foot in the slide. "Size thirteen."

"You have wide feet," Diana said, pulling a size 13 from the shelf and tossing the box to him.

"Better for traction," Bruce replied. He opened up the box and examined one of the sneakers.

"You can't change the width of your feet for advantageous fighting skills." Diana watched him put on the sneakers and tie the laces.

"I'm naturally well-endowed," Bruce said.

Diana gave him a look. "Now is not the time to hit on me, Bruce."

"Sorry." He grinned. "I have to have a little fun to offset this experience, don't I?"

He held up a sneaker-clad foot. "I don't like them. They're very flat. Can't I just grab a pair of boots so that we can get out of here?"

"No. You can't wear the same pair of shoes all the time. I don't care if you do own several dozen pairs of dress shoes for being Bruce Wayne—both of us know you avoid doing that as much as possible." Diana pulled six different styles of sneakers. "Now try these on and find a type you like, at least."

"I like my boots," Bruce muttered, but he sat down and tried on the shoes, finally settling on one black and white pair. "These are fine, I guess."

Diana sighed. "What's wrong with them?"

"The laces are too thick." Bruce picked at the shoes. "They're kind of annoying to tie. And you can feel the stitching on the inside."

"You're nuts." Diana said. "There is no possible way you can be that picky over a pair of tennis shoes."

"Sneakers," Bruce said. "The terms are not interchangeable. And you fight crime in high heels."

"Exactly," Diana said. "You can get over laces that are a little too thick."

"Fine. I will. Can I get some boots now so we can get out of here?" Bruce tossed the sneakers into the box and stood up.

"If you really hate them then find another pair." Diana took the box out of his hands.

"They're _fine_."

"It's obvious you don't like them. Don't get a pair of shoes you're never going to wear."

"Look," Bruce snapped. "You were the one who decided we were going to do this, even though I like my own boots perfectly damn well. So just let me get a pair of boots to appease you and let's leave, all right?"

Diana put her hands on her hips. "Are you done?"

"Yes," Bruce sighed.

"Good. Go find some you'll actually want." She shoved the shoes back onto the shelf.

"No," Diana said. "Absolutely not. You are not allowed to get those."

"Why not?" Bruce asked. "They're nice and comfortable, and the fit's good. Do you not like the color?"

"They're _Converse_, Bruce." Diana pinched the bridge of her nose. "You are not allowed to get Converse, be they black or white or rainbow-striped."

Bruce looked at her. "It's just a brand."

"Because it's what angsty teenagers wear, and they make you look about sixteen."

"Huh," Bruce said, and looked down at his feet.

"Honestly." Diana said. She was beginning to think that this had been a bad idea, too. "You can dress yourself fine for a charity ball, yet give you a pair of tennis shoes—excuse me, sneakers—and you don't know what to do with them."

"I understand how to put together a dress outfit." Bruce took off the Converse. "It's casual clothes that confuse me."

"What do you wear when you're just at home?" Diana followed him into the boot aisle. Bruce looked at the first pair, wrinkled his nose, and dropped them back on the shelf like it was a dead chipmunk or something.

"Jeans and a t-shirt."

"All right," she said. "How about when you're working on the car or training?"

"Jeans and a t-shirt, or the costume sans mask if I'm training."

"You must own a lot more jeans and t-shirts than I've seen." Diana picked up a pair of tennis shoes with grey laces that looked pretty nice.

Bruce glanced at the shoes in her hands disdainfully. "No, just the one."

"Of course." Diana said.

When Bruce and Diana finally returned, Tim practically tackled them at the door. "Where have you been? It's been four hours! I'm _starving_ and Alfred wouldn't let us eat without you—are those new pants?"

Bruce just groaned. Clark stuck his head out into the main hall and suppressed a bout of laughter he just knew Bruce wouldn't appreciate. "I thought it was shoes you were shopping for."

"It was," Bruce said.

"He needed clothes," Diana said. "We got shoes, too."

Bruce was standing very awkwardly in the hall. "I do not like these pants. They're too tight."

Diana gave him a look. "No, they just fit correctly." Then she grinned and leaned close to him. "Much better than those old ones."

Bruce scowled. "Now is not the time to hit on me."

Clark couldn't hold back a laugh anymore. He couldn't even stop when Bruce glared at him and snarled. "She threw out my clothing, Clark!"

Clark snickered again and went to help Alfred finish dinner before Bruce killed him. "I told you so."


	19. Birthday

**A/N:**** Just a short one today. Also, fair warning: it turned out way, way more crack!fic-y that I planned or would have liked.**

**Seeing as how the next fic in this series is the last one (and boy do I have a good idea for it) I'm debating what to do next. Because of time restraints, a multi-part story is out for now, but I'm debating between another series of 20 one-shots, or 10 one-shots set in the future of the league (MY version of the future, like in the last part of my previous one-shot series). So, which one would you like to see? Or if you have any other ideas, I'd like those too. **

~Birthday~

"I say we get ice cream," Wally said. "Chocolate? Do they make extra-dark-chocolate? 'Cause that seems pretty Bat-like. Does Bats even _like_ ice cream?"

John, J'onn and Shayera all shrugged. Diana said, "He does like chocolate, actually."

"This won't work, guys." Clark was sitting back in his chair, and trying very hard to not act like they were all completely crazy. "You obviously have never been around Bruce on his birthday. Honestly, he'd be better avoided."

"You're not giving into him, are you?" Diana asked. "If you indulge his antisocial tendencies he'll disappear into that cave and we'll never see him again."

"Only in this," Clark said. "Seriously—birthdays make him mental."

"What doesn't?" Wally asked.

Clark shook his head and sighed. "You guys haven't seen anything yet. Why do you think you didn't even know what day his birthday was until this year."

"Because we never thought to bribe Tim before." Flash jumped out of his chair and started leaping from one corner of the room to another. Clark wondered exactly how much caffeine, sugar, and gummy worms the kid had consumed today. "And Di—did you _really_ have to tell him I'd clean his room for two months?"

"Yes," Diana said, with an utterly straight face. "Clark, he's getting a party whether he wants one or not."

Clark shrugged. "Your death, I guess."

Bruce was not in a good mood when he arrived on the Watchtower, and so the hallways cleared when people heard he was coming their way. You didn't want to cross the man when he was in a _good_ mood, so no one wanted to see him in a bad one.

He swung open the door to the monitor room and growled at Booster Gold and Blue Beetle, who just ran. Then he sat down and started his shift.

He was working for a half-hour when he heard the door open behind him and someone tip-toe inside. As they obviously thought he couldn't hear them (as if), he decided to ignore them in the hopes that they would just go away and leave him be.

No luck.

Diana grabbed the chair and spun him around. "Come with me!"

He stared at her. This was not a day where he wanted to deal with anyone bubbly, grinning, or otherwise loud. And yet here she was. He sighed. "Why?"

Diana gave him a blank look. "I need your help…in the conference room…to…um…help me with something…Come on!"

"No." he spun back around in his chair and went back to the computer screen. "As you can see, I'm already doing something. I'm sure Clark can help you."

"Clark's, um, occupied," Diana said. "Plus, I already got Green Arrow to cover for you. For the rest of your shift. So there's absolutely no reason why you can't come with me."

Indeed, Green Arrow walked in at just that moment, with half a sandwich shoved in his mouth. He chewed, swallowed, looked a Batman and said, "She paid me twenty bucks. You gonna go or not?"

At this point Bruce honestly cared very little about monitor duty, so he just went with the path of least resistance, which was following her. So he got up and let her drag him to the conference room before she stepped back. He almost opened the door, but hesitated, eyes narrowing. "What did you want me, to do again?"

"Just get _in_ there!" Diana exclaimed. Bruce rolled his eyes and opened the door.

"Happy Birthday!" said Flash, Superman, Green Lantern, J'onn, and (grudgingly) Shayera, in unison. Batman, for the first time that anyone could remember, actually blinked. Then he turned on his heel and walked out.

Clark and Diana looked at each other, sighed, and went after him. Clark managed to keep from saying _I told you so_, mostly because Diana had a look like murder on her face.

After they left, Wally looked around and asked no one in particular, "I can still have ice cream, right?"

Clark and Diana caught up to Bruce in the monitor room. He had thrown Green Arrow out of the chair (who said, "Forget it, Di, you didn't pay me enough for this") and was now facing the monitor as if none of the last ten minutes had even occurred.

"You're being ridiculous," Diana said.

"No I'm not." Bruce didn't even turn around to face her. "It's not my birthday."

Clark and Diana looked at each other. "What? We asked Alfred."

Bruce glanced at the time on the computer screen. "It's 12:31. I'm still thirty-four until 4:53."

Clark rolled his eyes. "Oh for the love of…you know, I was almost on your side until that."

"You could come, eat a piece of cake and pretend that you're in an alternate universe or whatever it is you do when you're ignoring me," Diana said.

"I don't ignore you." Bruce said, without bothering to look at her.

"What do you call this?" she asked.

He sighed, pulled down his cowl, and turned to her. "Fine. How's this?"

Diana smiled at him. "I don't see what you're so wound up about. I think it's cute."

"What?" Bruce shook his head at her like she was insane. "What's cute?"

"Grey hair." Diana ruffled his hair, teasing out one strand. "Right there. See, I'll bet you never even noticed it, right?"

Bruce looked positively stricken. He grasped the hair and yanked it out to find that it was indeed grey. "Goddamn it," he said. "Well it's all downhill from here."

"So you'll come?" Diana asked.

Bruce shrugged sadly and let her pull him up from his chair. "Might as well."

"There's cake," Diana said. "And ice cream."

Clark just shook his head at the two of them. When they left the monitor bay, Flash ran up to Clark and tapped him on the shoulder.

"Hey," he said, tossing something to Clark. "Any idea what Di wanted me to do with the rest of this bottle of bleach? It doesn't take much just to color one hair."


	20. Dinner

**A/N: ****The last fic of this series! If you have an opinion on what I should do next (series of future one-shots vs. more present one-shots) please review! Also, I am considering a small multi-part story spinning off from this one. **

~Dinner~

"Remind me why I agreed to this again?" Bruce said, fingering the Scrabble titles and thinking of seven different words he could play, all of which would on the triple-score box.

"Ma wanted to see the boys." Clark played "canine" which made Bruce with derision. They were sitting across from each other on the floor of one of the Wayne manor's living rooms (the one connected to the kitchen to be exact). Clark was quite enjoying the game. Bruce was trying to resist the urge to leap up and start doing something productive. "And Alfred wanted you to be more social."

"Mm," Bruce said, and played "xeric".

"Is that even a word?" Clark asked.

"Are you doubting me?" Bruce looked at him.

Clark shrugged and picked more tiles. "I think Ma's been lonely since Pa died. She likes seeing Alfred."

"Mm," Bruce said.

"That's all?"

"You know I'm not good with sentimental things." Bruce watched Clark fiddle with his tiles more. "But yes, they seem to get along well enough."

Dick and Tim raced into the room, Dick abandoning his "I'm so grown-up" attitude for a minute to tackle his little brother and toss him onto the couch. Tim, giggling, rolled off onto the floor and into the middle of their Scrabble game. "Alfred and Ma Kent say its time for dinner."

On cue, Ma yelled. "Boys! Dinner!"

Alfred appeared in the kitchen doorway. "Master Bruce, Master Clark, dinner is served."

Clark looked at him quizzically. Alfred turned to lead them to the dining room. "Forgive me, sir, but it is a butler's duty to announce meals. Whether or not Martha decided to infringe on that duty."

"Oh, honestly." Martha walked in, drying her hands on her apron. "I'm sure there's also some butlerly-rule against redundancy."

"Not a one," Alfred said. His pencil mustache twitched in what might have been a smile. His attention focused again on Clark and Bruce. "Now please pick up your game and join us in the dining room."

Clark tossed the Scrabble board and pieces into the box while Bruce stood up and brushed imaginary dirt from his trousers.

"You could have helped," Clark said, in mock-annoyance once he stood up.

Bruce raised an eyebrow at him. "You have superspeed for a reason, Kent."

Clark sighed and they walked into the dining room. Tim and Dick were already seated, forks in hand, drooling over the pot roast displayed in the center of the table, courtesy of Ma Kent. Bruce sat down across from them, looking at the roast only a hair more patiently than his wards.

"Oh dear," said Ma, "I seem to have left the gravy in the kitchen."

"And I the serving spoons," Alfred said, and followed her through the doors.

"They forgot my water, too." Tim wrinkled his nose at the empty spot in front of his plate. "And I'm thirsty."

Bruce sighed. "I'll get you a water."

He stood up from his chair, opened the door and froze. Alfred and Martha were standing in front of the stove, close. While Bruce watched, eyes wide, Martha put her arms around Alfred. And _kissed_ him.

"What's going on?" Clark asked, walking up behind him. He evidently saw the same thing as Bruce did (he'd been wishing that this was the effect of hallucinogens) because he stopped and breathed, "Oh, my—"

Martha looked up at the sound of her son's voice and blushed. "Oh dear. Alfie, I think the cat's out of the bag."

"_Alfie_?" Bruce repeated, silently.

By now Dick and Tim had tumbled into the room, and ascertained what was going on. Dick wore the same shocked expression that Bruce did. Tim was staring and mumbling something about how gross it was to see old people kissing.

"This is…" Clark began, broke off, and ended with, "…a surprise."

"It only happened recently. We were planning on telling you soon," Martha said, and giggled like a schoolgirl. "Ok, Clark, I was so lonely after your father died…at the last Thanksgiving Alfie and I just hit it off."

"I do not wish to replace your father, Master Clark," Alfred said, his hand on Martha's arm. "Martha and I are quite fond of each other…but if you feel this is a development you cannot accept…"

Clark smiled, a grin from ear to ear. "No! Guys, this is…this is great. You're two of my favorite people…Ma, you totally deserve someone."

They all smiled at each other for a moment before Alfred turned his gaze to the doorway and said, almost expectantly, "Master Wayne….?"

Bruce was still standing in the doorway, staring at all of them.

"Bruce?" Clark said.

"I…" he started, still looking shocked. "I…uh…_holy crap_."

Clark, Alfred, and Martha burst out laughing. Bruce blinked at them all. Dick, grinning, grabbed the gravy and serving spoons and kicked open the door to the dining room. "Come on guys, this calls for a celebratory dinner."

They all sat down at the table, Tim and Dick jockeying for the largest slices of roast, Clark and Bruce on the left side, Ma and Alfred next to each other. Clark was pretty sure they were holding hands under the table, but he respected them both enough to not peek.

Clark looked over at Bruce. "Are you done processing this?"

Bruce stared down at his plate and mumbled something like, "That was certainly not expected."

Tim shoved a double-bite of mashed potatoes in his mouth and said through the half-chewed food, "If they get married, would that make you _Uncle_ Superman?"

Bruce choked on his roast the minute "married" left Tim's mouth. Clark chucked. Dick kicked his little brother under the table.

Martha and Alfred smiled at each other. Alfred put his hand over Martha's but said, "Now, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves, boys."

"No let's not," Bruce said, so quietly that only Clark heard it.

Tim said, even more quietly, "Kissing is gross anyway."

Clark grinned and hid it behind a forkful of roast. This was certainly going to be interesting, at the very least.


End file.
